25 Years Space Photogrammetry in Germany - a Research Field initiated by GOTTFRIED KONECNY

Kurzfassung

The German photogrammetrists started to show interest in the field of “Space Photogrammetry” at the beginning of the Eighties. The first space experiment especially devoted to photogrammetry was proposed by Gottfried Konecny; it was the “Metric Camera Experiment” based on a conventional aerial survey camera, which was successfully conducted under his supervision in 1983 on the first Spacelab Flight. In cooperation with other colleagues he was also involved in the follow on DLR-missions MOMS-02 on the D2 Space Shuttle Flight in 1993 and in the MOMS-2P/Priroda Flight on the Russian MIR station from 1996-1999. In these missions the so called along track stereo-imaging principle was applied for the first time in space. This principle is now also used in remote sensing space missions of other countries e.g. in the French SPOT-5 mission. The same imaging principle is also used for the HRSC-camera developed by DLR and presently successfully used in ESA’s “MARS EXPRESS Mission” for topographic mapping of the Mars surface. A complete new method – SAR-Interferometry – for deriving digital terrain models from space was used in NASA’s “Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM)” in the year 2000. DLR participated in this mission with an own X-band Sythetic Aperture Radar (SAR)-System. The processing of the X-band data to digital terrain models covering about 30 Mio. km<SUP>2</SUP> of the earth’s surface was completed in 2004. The paper gives a survey on the development of space photogrammetry in Germany and refers to Gottfried Konecny’s contribution to this development. Facts of the above mentioned missions will be presented and their results will be reviewed.