ABSTRACT:10 years ago the first European interplanetary mission Mars Express was launched and sent into orbit around Mars. One of the scientific instruments on board the orbiter is the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). This multi-line sensor with five panchromatic and four multispectral CCD lines was developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) for photogrammetric mapping purposes. It images the Martian surface with a resolution of up to 12m per pixel, depending on the altitude. The along-track stereo capability of the camera delivers image strips with three-dimensional information, which cover nearly the whole planet. For a derivation of more accurate digital terrain models and orthoimages the orientation data of the camera is improved via bundle adjustment.To map larger regions overlapping image strips can be used to form photogrammetric blocks, thus allowing a simultaneous adjustment of the different strips. Compared to the adjustment of individual strips, an adjustment of the entire block reduces not only local, but also regional inconsistencies in the data. With the growing number of HRSC image strips in this ongoing mission, number, size and complexity of potential blocks increases. To cope with these data a method for a semi-automated analysis, selection and combination of suitable strips for the design of more accurate and reliable blocks has been developed. The method takes the inhomogeneity of the HRSC data into account by adapting the processing parameters, if necessary for each strip.
ABSTRACT:The European Mars Express mission was launched in June 2003 and sent into orbit around Mars. On board the orbiter is the German High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). This multi-line sensor images the Martian surface with a resolution of up to 12m per pixel in three dimensions and provides RGB and infra-red color information. The usage of the stereoscopic image information for the improvement of the observed position and attitude information via bundle adjustment is important to derive high quality 3D surface models, color orthoimages and other data products. In many cases overlapping image strips of different orbits can be used to form photogrammetric blocks, thus allowing the simultaneous adjustment of the exterior orientation data. This reduces not only local, but also regional inconsistencies in the data. With the growing number of HRSC image strips in this ongoing mission, the size and complexity of potential blocks is increasing. Therefore, a workflow has been built up for the systematic improvement of the exterior orientation using single orbit strips and regional blocks. For a successful bundle adjustment of blocks using multiple image strips a sufficient number of tie points in the overlapping area is needed. The number of tie points depends mainly on the geometric and radiometric quality of the images. This is considered by detailed analysis of the tie point accuracy and distribution. The combination of methods for image pre-processing, tie point matching, bundle adjustment and evaluation of the results in an automated workflow allows for all HRSC images a global assessment of the quality and a systematic selection of data for larger blocks.
ABSTRACT:The photogrammetric bundle adjustment of line scanner image data requires a precise description of the time-dependent image orientation. For this task exterior orientation parameters of discrete points are used to model position and viewing direction of a camera trajectory via polynomials. This paper investigates the influence of the distance between these orientation points on the quality of trajectory modeling. A new method adapts the distance along the trajectory to the available image information. Compared to a constant distance as used previously, a better reconstruction of the exterior orientation is possible, especially when image quality changes within a strip. In our research we use image strips of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), taken to map the Martian surface. Several experiments on the global image data set have been carried out to investigate how the bundle adjustment improves the image orientation, if the new method is employed. For evaluation the forward intersection errors of 3D points derived from HRSC images, as well as their remaining height differences to the MOLA DTM are used. In 13.5 % (515 of 3,828) of the image strips, taken during this ongoing mission over the last 12 years, high frequency image distortions were found. Bundle adjustment with a constant orientation point distance was able to reconstruct the orbit in 239 (46.4 %) cases. A variable orientation point distance increased this number to 507 (98.6 %).
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