Archaeologist Ken Karsmizki at lower portage camp, Great Falls, Mont. (Montana State University)

This week, researchers at NASA's Stennis Space Center, in southern Mississippi, and noted archaeologist Ken Karsmizki announced a joint venture to map sites along the trail of Lewis and Clark, who explored uncharted territory west of the Mississippi River for the American government 200 years ago. NASA will use airplanes and space satellites to collect remote sensing data and identify campsites and forts from the expedition. On the ground, Karsmizki, who has studied the Lewis and Clark path for 15 years, will follow historic maps and journal entries to confirm the space agency's findings.

The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, managed by the National Park Service, identifies more than 80 sites from the journey. But Karsmizki says these have all been discovered by studying the historical record. "No campsite has ever been located based on physical evidence," he says. "And it is almost impossible for someone to go out camping without leaving behind some trace that they were there."

The Corps of Discovery expedition, headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, lasted 863 days, and the group camped at more than 600 locations along the way, says Karsmizki. But most sites were used for less than 12 hours. For the NASA project, Karsmizki has targeted places where the group stayed for longer periods, increasing the possiblity that they left behind traces of their passage, among them, Fort Mandan in North Dakota, the group's 1805 winter camp; Fort Clatsop, on the Oregon coast, the 1806 winter camp; and Fort Manuel, a fur-trading fort, near the border of North and South Dakota, where their Native American guide Sacagawea died in 1812 and is buried.

Karsmizki and his team will be working on a landscape that has altered considerably in two centuries. The Missouri River has meandered, and a site in southwest Illinois, where Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1803, is now a dense urban area anchored by an Amoco shipping company. "It's going to be hard," Karsmizki admits. "But there's an element of it that is just fascinating."

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