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Automated Digital Terrain Model Generation from HiRISE and LROC Stereo Imagery
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| The Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter (MOLA) has significantly advanced the study of the Martian surface by providing Geologists with
a highly accurate elevation map of the entire planet. In addition, it now serves as the standard for geodetic control and co-registration
of data sets on the martian globe. However, its limited resolution (463m/pixel at the equator) has rendered it insufficient for detailed
studies of specific sites; e.g. geologic stratification and deposition analysis, or in the case of mission planning, landing site selection. In
situations that demand highly resolute digital terrain models (DTMs), dense stereo reconstruction from orbital imagery has been the
favored technique. Extremely high resolution images from Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
have yielded terrain models of substantially higher resolution (10m/pixel or less) than MOLA. This will also be true when the Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission flies in 2009: DTMs produced by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) will
complement the coarse global map of lunar terrain available from the Lunar Orbital Laser Altimeter (LOLA) experiment. High
resolution stereo models allow scientists and mission planners to resolve important surface details with an unprecedented level of
detail, however building stereo-derived DTMs has historically been a time consuming process. Modern photogrammetric workstations
such as SOCET SET incorporate only a modest level of automation; considerable man-power is still required to create artifact-free,
well-controlled data products. The substantial number of man-hours and resources involved in creating a DTM from stereo imagery
has meant that only a limited number of these data products have reached the scientific community. The number of available stereo
pairs far exceeds the number that can be processed using existing techniques, and this gap widens as technology improves and each
new mission sends back more raw data than the last. To address this problem, the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) at NASA Ames has
developed an automated stereo processing software, the Ames Stereo Pipeline (ASP), that is capable of generating high quality DTMs
from satellite imagery using a fully automated process. The ASP is being used in existing collaborations to generate DTMs from Mars
Orbital Camera (MOC), High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), and Apollo Panoramic Camera imagery. In this project, we propose
to expand upon the capabilities of the ASP and to transition from operating in a proof-of-concept capacity to mission and science
focused production. In particular, we plan to increase the utility of raw data from the current HiRISE and upcoming LROC missions
by providing scientists and mission planners with timely access to automatically generated 3D surface models from the latest orbital
imagery as it becomes available. |
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