Evolution Strategy-Based Approach for Joint Analysis of Laser Altimeter Tracks and Photogrammetric Stereo DTMs: MOLA and HRSC

Kurzfassung

The extraction of planetary radii from laser pulses requires precise knowledge of spacecraft trajectory and the instrument’s orientation in space. Limited knowledge of these extrinsic parameters causes deviating height information at cross-over points of the laser tracks and occasionally substantially offset outlier profiles. Applying adjustment techniques, the final mission data products minimized the cross-over residuals while still showing considerable variability in height differences when compared to HRSC Mars quadrangle DTMs. We accurately co-register MOLA profiles to existing HRSC DTMs allowing to increase the accuracy of the co-registration of the single laser tracks while providing similar internal a-posteriori cross-over accuracies as in previous works. The method applies Evolution Strategy (ES) to directly solve for extrinsic observation parameters. Combined HRSC / MOLA DTMs will provide a most comprehensive, best resolved global data product currently available for Mars.