Performance of Automatic Tie Point Extraction Using Hrsc Imagery of the Mars Express Mission

In January 2004 the first European interplanetary spacecraft, Mars Express, was inserted successfully into a Martian orbit. The multiline scanner HRSC (High Resolution Stereo Camera) on board of Mars Express will image most of the surface of Mars in colour and stereoscopically in high resolution. The Institute of Photogrammetry and GeoInformation (IPI), University of Hannover, has created software for the automatic extraction of homologous image primitives from HRSC image data. With the obtained tie points a bundle block adjustment will be carried out with software developed at the Chair for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (LPF) of the Technische Universität München which will result in an improved exterior orientation of the camera. With these results high level products such as digital terrain models (DTMs), ortho photos and shaded reliefs can be derived from the imagery. This paper describes the used approach for the tie point matching. On the basis of some selected Mars Express orbits the results of the matching, the distribution of the tie points in the images and the achieved accuracy are presented and evaluated.