I was looking at the wiki and came across the page http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Potential_Datasources which lists many existing datasets as well as links to people who have imagery we may be able to make use of. One of these sources is the images taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The images are taken with an off the shelf camera and a very long lens (800 mm focal length). The resulting ground images can be quite detailed and are often of intersting places, many of which are not covered by Bing or Yahoo.

I thought I would look up Libya (as it is a current HOT project) expecting to find one or two images but was pleasantly surprised to find dozens of them. I have uploaded to MapWarper two of the images covering Misrata during the day (an area where our map is very bad due to no hi-res imagery) and plan to also upload one of the Misrata at night images which shows a larger area, as well as one for Surt.

Surt is a particularly interesting case as we have a very poor map of it (again due to lack of imagery), but it is also the hometown of Muammar Gaddafi making it one of the strongholds for the current government. I will try to get the Surt and Mirata at night photos up on mapwarper later today. If anyone wants to upload them before that to start working on them earlier, please respond to this diary entry so I know not to upload a second copy.

Below are the links to the two images already on mapwarper. The description is all run together (mapwarper doesn't display the newlines in the description) but they contain the original NASA url and the source tag you should use for tracing (which is really long unfortunately).

http://warper.geothings.net/maps/4614
http://warper.geothings.net/maps/4615

If you follow the links above to the mapwarper images there is an 'Export' tab which has the links you need to use the imagery in JOSM or Potlach.

Also, as is common practice I have entered the borders of the imagery into the OSM database so when people open the area in JOSM, or what have you, they know there is a source of imagery there that is available. I have tagged the two ways forming the boundaries with the source tag you should use for roads traced from each one. (Note that the source tags are identical except for the image number at the end.)

http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/123629704
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/123635525

I will be doing a lot of tracing in these areas over the next few days and if anyone wants to join in that would be cool. The last time I called for help on Libya I got a very good response and we mapped an area with a lot more streets than this in just a few days so soon our map will likely be as good as or better than anyone else's in these areas.

-Buck