Albert Lin with one of his drones, preparing to explore the Nan Madol site in Micronesia, in a scene from Lost Cities. (Credit: National Geographic)

One of the happy surprises of the space age is that the same technologies propelling our civilization into the future have also proven hugely valuable for recovering lost details of civilizations past. Over the past three decades, satellite imagery and space-based radar have been used to locate more than 1,000 unknown ancient tombs in Egypt, to