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Location and Setting of the Mars InSight Lander, Instruments, and Landing Site

Golombek, M.; Warner, N. H.; Williams, N. +23 more

Knowing precisely where a spacecraft lands on Mars is important for understanding the regional and local context, setting, and the offset between the inertial and cartographic frames. For the InSight spacecraft, the payload of geophysical and environmental sensors also particularly benefits from knowing exactly where the instruments are located. A…

A Generic Pushbroom Sensor Model for Planetary Photogrammetry

Geng, Xun; Xu, Qing; Lan, Chaozhen +1 more

Different imaging instruments are designed in the planetary exploration missions, which require respective photogrammetric software modules to support the geometric processing of planetary remote sensing images. To decrease the cost of software development and maintenance, this paper presents a generic pushbroom sensor model for planetary photogra…

Empirical Brightness Control and Equalization of Mars Context Camera Images

Robbins, Stuart J.; Kirchoff, Michelle R.; Hoover, Rachael H.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft has been in orbit around Mars since March 2006. The Context Camera (CTX) on MRO has returned over 115,000 images of the planet at approximately 5-6 m per pixel, providing nearly global coverage. During that time, Mars has gone through nearly seven of its own years, changing solar distance from 1.38 …

Planetary Sensor Models Interoperability Using the Community Sensor Model Specification

Hare, T.; Laura, J. R.; Mapel, J.

This paper presents the photogrammetric foundations upon which the Community Sensor Model specification depends, describes common coordinate system and reference frame transformations that support conversion between image sensor (charge-coupled device) coordinates to some arbitrary body coordinate, and describes the U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeo…

Coupling Mars Ground and Orbital Views: Generate Viewsheds of Mastcam Images From the Curiosity Rover, Using ArcGIS® and Public Datasets

Stein, N.; Nachon, M.; Borges, S. +3 more

The Mastcam (Mast Camera) instrument onboard the NASA Curiosity rover provides an exclusive view of Mars: High-resolution color images from Mastcam allow users to study Gale crater's geologic terrains along Curiosity's path. These ground observations complement the spatially broader views of Gale crater provided by spacecrafts from orbit. However,…