HRSC is a High Resolution Stereo Camera onboard the ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft in orbit around Mars. This instrument provides high spatial resolution images of the Martian surface in 3D, and in full color. It was developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and built in cooperation with industrial partners (EADS Astrium, Lewicki Microelectronic GmbH and Jena-Optronik GmbH). An airborne version of the HRSC camera, the HRSC-AX, is used to investigate terrestrial analogues (see the DLR Svalbard Campaign theme). The HRSC experiment is led by the Principal Investigator (PI) Prof. Dr Gerhard Neukum (FU Berlin). The science team of the experiment consists of 45 Co-Investigators from 32 institutions and 10 nations. Since its first data acquirements in January 2004, the camera provided the basis for extensive studies of the surface structure and morphology on local, regional and global scales using the photogeologic information from the image, the topographic information from the digital terrain model and spectral terrain information from color images (Jaumann et al., 2007). HRSC made a major contribution to the topographic mapping of Mars. Read more...

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is in its lunar orbit since July 2009. The LROC wide angle camera (WAC) onboard the LRO spacecraft provided image data of about 75 m/pxl ground resolution from an average orbit altitude of 50 km. The WAC swath width is 70 km. There is significant overlap between WAC images from adjacent orbits. Thus, within each month of the LRO mission, WAC stereo images of the entire lunar surface are acquired. We used DLR's stereo-photogrammetric processing system for the derivation of an almost global lunar digital terrain model with 100 m grid spacing, the "GLD100". Read more...

When the US Navy/BMDO/NASA Clementine probe [1] visited the Moon between January and April 1994, it produced the first ever almost complete topographic map of the Moon using a laser altimeter, and covered all latitudes except within about 10° of each pole [2]. However the average spacing between height measurements was quite sparse at a few tens of kilometres apart. Although this made the study of large scale topography possible for the first time, at the smaller scale of less than tens of kilometres, the Moon’s shape was unknown except over the equator region where the Apollo missions had flown with stereo cameras during the late 1960’s to early 1970’s.

The Clementine spacecraft had a downward pointing camera that was used to produce a global multi-waveband colour mosaic of the entire lunar surface. Although these overlapped, the overlap was quite small. The images were also telephoto in nature (narrow angle fields of view) unlike conventional wide angle terrestrial aircraft stereo images, and because there was little tilt between adjacent images, the stereo was very weak. Read more...

High in the Arctic, closer to the North Pole than almost any other land surface on Earth, the archipelago of Svalbard offers a variety of unique research opportunities to planetary geologists who are interested in the study of water on Mars. Many geologic phenomena in this cold arctic environment are analogous to landforms on Mars that have been interpreted as periglacial or glacial in origin. Among these are rock glaciers, patterned ground (polygons), pingos, and braided rivers. Other surface features in Svalbard that are very similar to Martian landforms are gullies. On Mars, their discovery in high-resolution MOC images several years ago has led to speculations that liquid water has existed in the very recent past on Mars. This is an exciting idea, since the present Martian environment prevents liquid water to be stable on Mars, because the atmospheric pressure is too low and the temperatures are mostly too cold. Read more...