BUNDLE ADJUSTMENT OF SPACEBORNE DOUBLE-CAMERA PUSH-BROOM IMAGERS AND ITS APPLICATION TO LROC NAC IMAGERY

Abstract. The TU Berlin group of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team has implemented a Bundle Adjustment (BA) for spaceborne multi-lenses line scan imagers, by rigorously modeling the geometric properties of the image acquisition. The BA was applied to stereo image sets of the LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) and first results show, that the overall geometry of the stereo models were significantly improved. Ray intersection accuracies of initially up to several meters were homogenized within the integrated stereo models and improved to 0.14 m on average. The mean point error of the adjusted 3D object points was estimated by the BA to be 0.95 m. The inclusion of available Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) shots as 3D ground control to the BA, accurately tied to the image space by an aforegoing co-registration, allowed to register the final adjusted NAC DTM to the currently most accurate global lunar reference frame. The BA also provides accuracy assessments of the individual LOLA tracks used for georeference during the adjustment, which will be useful to further assess LOLA derived products.