NASA's Stennis Space Center on Mississippi's Gulf Coast is using high-resolution satellite images to identify and map possible campsites along the trail of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The space agency is working with the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in The Dalles, Ore., and with Lewis and Clark archaeologist Ken Karsmizki, a curator at the center.

"Conducting archaeology from space is an exciting concept," said Karsmizki, who has spent the past 15 years examining expedition sites. "Our efforts to uncover Lewis and Clark outposts are enhanced using this technology."

Congress approved $2,500 in 1803 for President Thomas Jefferson's Corps of Discovery to mount a small expedition to explore his new Louisiana Purchase.

Meriwether Lewis invited William Clark to join him as co-commander of the party that would travel thousands of miles, encounter hundreds of new species and map uncharted lands. They started from St. Louis in May 1804, eventually reached the mouth of the Columbia River in what now is Washington state, and returned to St. Louis on Sept. 23, 1806.

Karsmizki has examined sites in Montana, Oregon, North and South Dakota, Idaho and elsewhere. He's found that many of the duo's journal entries were written after long, grueling days on the trail and contain geographical inaccuracies.

NASA is combining precision satellite imagery with detailed historic maps to help Karsmizki pinpoint possible campsites. In some cases, the technology can reduce a potential dig site from several square miles to a matter of acres.

NASA's Earth Science Applications Directorate (ESAD) is providing the high-resolution images to Karsmizki and his team. Marco Giardino, ESAD's acting deputy director at Stennis, said NASA scientists can create a 360-degree view of an area where Lewis and Clark traveled.

"From that view," Giardino said, "archaeologists can follow the trails as if they were flying over the actual landscape, in real time and in any direction or angle they choose."

Stennis, NASA's lead center for earth-science applications, has used remote sensing to assist archaeologists since 1974. The agency has helped find roads built by Pueblo Indians in New Mexico and Arizona more than 1,000 years ago and archaeological sites in Yucatán, Mexico.

Giardino's department will work with Karsmizki until at least 2004, when the nation will be marking the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

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