Images from the IKONOS satellite, owned by Space Imaging, peer down on the Olympics from 423 miles (681 kilometers) above, revealing details down to 3-feet (1 meter).

One photo shows the 2002 Olympic Village at the University of Utah and the Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium, venue of the Opening Ceremony Feb. 8 and the Closing Ceremony Feb. 24. The stadium was recently expanded to seat a capacity of 56,000 people.

IKONOS also snapped close-up views of the nearby outdoor ski towns of Deer Park and Park City and the slopes above them. Park City will host downhill skiing, slalom, giant slalom, luge and snowboarding events. At Deer Valley, medals will be won in moguls, aerials and slalom events.

The IKONOS photos were taken Jan. 7.

NASA, too, is playing the Olympic image game.

To mark the 30th Anniversary of its Landsat program of Earth-observing satellites, the space agency released a host of images of the region, including some that paint the Salt Lake basin and its surrounding mountains in dramatic relief.

An animation generated by NASA provides a birds-eye fly-over with colored pushpins that designate various Olympic event locations.

Satellites do more, of course, than observe places where games are played. But the new imagery highlights what can be done.

Technology is becoming so refined that sensors can note the changed position of a leaf on a tree from one orbital pass to the next. This fact actually frustrates some observations, but when employed over open ground it allows scientists to measure lava flows and spot potential volcanic eruptions.

Satellites have revealed earthquake faults along the East Coast that could not be detected otherwise, and they've shown helped scientists pinpoint potentially threatening earthquake spots elsewhere. One geologist even used satellites to determine that parts of California are sinking because of the way municipalities pump water into and out of natural underground reservoirs.

Seeing how the Earth changes over time makes a host of studies possible. With three decades of satellite observations in the bag, researchers are improving their understanding of how Earth's climate, ocean currents and other cycles change with time, and how all this affects life on Earth.

Scientists also use satellites to spot signs of human impact on the environment, including loss of forest and other vegetation.

The newly released imagery shows, for example, how Salt Lake City has grown dramatically over the past three decades.