Automatic Mars Landing Site Mapping Using Surface-based Images

This paper presents techniques for automatic mapping of Mars landing sites using surface-based images, i.e., those taken by Mars landers and/or rovers. An innovative method for automatic tie point selection is presented that includes five steps: interest point extraction, interest point matching, parallax verification, graph consistency verification and final tie point selection with gridding. In matching interest points between adjacent stereo pairs, a rough DEM is generated to predict the location of conjugate points and to limit the search range. As a result, a surface image network is built by linking all the lander and/or rover images with the automatically selected tie points. An integrated bundle adjustment is developed and applied to the image network in order to improve accuracy of the position and orientation of the images as well as the ground location of feature points. Finally, a landing site DEM and a seamless orthophoto are generated using a set of automation techniques. The developed method and software are tested using lander images obtained from the 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission and rover images obtained from a 2002 FIDO test.