Topographic Local Roughness Extraction and Calibration Over Martian Surface by Very High Resolution Stereo Analysis and Multi Sensor Data Fusion

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The planetary topography has been the main focus of the in-orbital remote sensing. In spite of the recent development in active and passive sensing technologies to reconstruct three dimensional planetary topography, the resolution limit of range measurement is theoretically and practically obvious. Therefore, the extraction of inner topographical height variation within a measurement spot is very challengeable and beneficial topic for the many application fields such as the identification of landform, Aeolian process analysis and the risk assessment of planetary lander. In this study we tried to extract the topographic height variation over martian surface so called local roughness with different approaches. One method is the employment of laser beam broadening effect and the other is the multi angle optical imaging. Especially, in both cases, the precise pre processing employing high accuracy DTM (Digital Terrain Model) were introduced to minimise the possible errors. Since a processing routine to extract very high resolution DTMs up to 0.5-4m grid-spacing from HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) and 20-10m DTM from CTX (Context Camera) stereo pair has been developed, it is now possible to calibrate the local roughness compared with the calculated height variation from very high resolution topographic products. Three testing areas were chosen and processed to extract local roughness with the co-registered multi sensor data sets. Even though, the extracted local roughness products are still showing the strong correlation with the topographic slopes, we demonstrated the potentials of the height variations extraction and calibration methods.

Progress and prospects for research on Martian topographic features and typical landform identification

“…The stellar solid geodetic coordinate system (Duxbury et al, 2002;Archinal et al, 2011), with an origin and a base plane, is similar to that of the Earth. Kim and Muller, 2008 developed a processing workflow by combining digital terrain models (DTMs) of 0.5-4 m networks extracted from the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and DTMs of 12-18 m grids extracted from stereo image pairs. Yan et al (2022) produced a topographic dataset of the "Tianwen-1" landing area based on the HiRIC stereo photogrammetry processing scheme, with a ground sampling distance of 0.7 m, a digital orthophoto map (DOM) resolution of 3.5 m, and a digital elevation model (DEM) resolution of 3.5 m. Lakdawalla (2005) used Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) data to produce a global topographic map of Mars.…”

Remote Sensing and Data Analyses on Planetary Topography

“…Compared to the 1-2 m resolution imaging provided by MOC NA images, the 40 cm GSD of HiRISE, together with stereo capability, opened up new horizons in planetary surface mapping. Instead of the 10-CCD structure design of HiRISE, stereo CTX with 6 m spatial resolution and stable imaging based on single-CCD geometry [88] was also highly effective for the mapping of the Martian surface [87,89]. Over the past decade, these two sensors have produced very valuable image products covering 1% and 99.1% of the surface of Mars, respectively (https://mars.…”

“…Nowadays, most planetary photogrammetric processors mainly belong to either of the two approaches. However, the approaches to representing sensor models using polynomial representation, so-called non-rigorous sensor models, are sometimes implemented [89,214,215] as those can be better manipulated by in-house stereo routines employing standard industrial functionality [216,217]. A case of multi-resolution DEMs using a non-rigorous sensor model approach [214] on the Martian surface is demonstrated in Figure 6.…”

“…However, in order to employ it in a planetary image processor, two problems must be solved, that is, the precise definition of epi-polar lines [224] and their application to textureless surfaces. The strategies utilizing base topography for imagematching have clear advantages in textureless imagery [89,214], which frequently occurs in flat regions of the planet's surface, such as the northern hemispheric basin of Mars. However, the co-registration between the base topography and the corresponding image should be secured in this case.…”

“…As aforementioned, pulse broadening and stretching are primarily caused by surface roughness and slope at the baseline of the laser footprint. By compensating for the effects of surface slope, it is feasible to derive the surface roughness at the footprint scale by utilizing energy measurements of the return pulses [89,237,238]. These small-scale roughness measurements can complement larger-scale ones derived from coarser topographic models to indicate the morphology and evolution of planetary surfaces.…”