Abstract
Digital Terrain Model (DTM) creation is essential to improving our understanding of the formation processes of the Martian surface. Although there have been previous demonstrations of open-source or commercial planetary 3D reconstruction software, planetary scientists are still struggling with creating good quality DTMs that meet their science needs, especially when there is a requirement to produce a large number of high quality DTMs using “free” software. In this paper, we describe a new open source system to overcome many of these obstacles by demonstrating results in the context of issues found from experience with several planetary DTM pipelines. We introduce a new fully automated multi-resolution DTM processing chain for NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Context Camera (CTX) and High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) stereo processing, called the Co-registration Ames Stereo Pipeline (ASP) Gotcha Optimised (CASP-GO), based on the open source NASA ASP. CASP-GO employs tie-point based multi-resolution image co-registration, and Gotcha sub-pixel refinement and densification. CASP-GO pipeline is used to produce planet-wide CTX and HiRISE DTMs that guarantee global geo-referencing compliance with respect to High Resolution Stereo Colour imaging (HRSC), and thence to the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA); providing refined stereo matching completeness and accuracy. All software and good quality products introduced in this paper are being made open-source to the planetary science community through collaboration with NASA Ames, United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Advanced Multi-Mission Operations System (AMMOS) Planetary Data System (PDS) Pipeline Service (APPS-PDS4), as well as browseable and visualisable through the iMars web based Geographic Information System (webGIS) system.
Highlights
We introduce a fully automated multi-resolution Digital Terrain Model (DTM) processing chain developed by the Imaging Group at Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) at University College London (UCL) for NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Context Camera (CTX) and High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) stereo-pairs
The CASP-GO system was assessed independently by two sources: a data validation test performed by DLR and web based Geographic Information System (webGIS) interface tests performed by FUB
Within the recently completed EU FP-7 iMars project, we tested/ evaluated several popular planetary DTM pipelines including two inhouse DTM pipelines from iMars partners, in which the NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline (ASP) software showed the best performance against the others
Summary
The resolution and quality of orbital imagery has improved from tens of kilometres down to 25 cm. During these 5 decades, many areas on Mars have been imaged with serendipitous stereo, mainly to improve the potential for scientific studies. The rapid progress in planetary surface reconnaissance instrumentation, especially in relation to 3D imaging of the surface, has allowed change detection analysis. By overlaying different high-resolution (
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