HYPSOS (HYPerspectral Stereo Observing System, patented) is a novel remote sensing instrument able to extract the spectral information from the two channels of a pushbroom stereo camera; thus it simultaneously provides 4D information, spatial and spectral, of the observed features. HYPSOS has been designed to be a compact instrument, compatible with small satellite applications, to be suitable both for planetary exploration as well for terrestrial environmental monitoring. An instrument with such global capabilities, both in terms of scientific return and needed resources, is optimal for fully characterizing the observed surface of investigation. HYPSOS optical design couples a pair of folding mirrors to a modified three mirror anastigmat telescope for collecting the light beams from the optical paths of the two stereo channels; then, on the telescope focal plane, there is the entrance slit of an imaging spectrograph, which selects and disperses the light from the two stereo channels on a bidimensional detector. With this optical design, the two stereo channels share the large majority of the optical elements: this allowed to realize a very compact instrument, which needs much less resources than an equivalent system composed by a stereo camera and a spectrometer. To check HYPSOS actual performance, we realized an instrument prototype to be operated in a laboratory environment. The laboratory setup is representative of a possible flight configuration: the light diffused by a surface target is collimated on the HYPSOS channel entrance apertures, and the target is moved with respect to the instrument to reproduce the in-flight pushbroom acquisition mode. Here we describe HYPSOS and the ground support equipment used to characterize the instrument, and show the preliminary results of the instrument alignment activities.
The HYPerspectral Stereo Observing System (HYPSOS) is a novel remote sensing pushbroom instrument able to give simultaneously both 3D spatial and spectral information of the observed features. HYPSOS is a very compact instrument, which makes it attractive for both possible planetary observation and for its use on a nanosat, e.g. for civilian applications. This instrument collects light from two different perspectives, as a classical pushbroom stereocamera, which allows to realize the tridimensional model of the observed surface, and then to extract the spectral information from each resolved element, thus obtaining a full 4-dimensional hypercube dataset. To demonstrate the actual performance of this novel type of instrument, we are presently realizing a HYPSOS prototype, that is an instrument breadboard to be tested in a laboratory environment. For checking its performance, we setup an optical facility representative of a possible flight configuration. In this paper we provide a description of HYPSOS concept, of its optomechanical design and of the ground support equipment used to characterize the instrument. An update on the present status of the experiment is finally given.
HYPSOS (Hyperspectral Stereo Observing System, patented) is a novel concept for a hyperspectral-stereo camera that combines the 3D information attainable by two stereo images, with the fine spectral sampling of a spectrograph. Planetary remote sensing represents an interesting application field for the HYPSOS concept. At the basis of HYPSOS there is the merge between two different approaches for studying the surface of a planet: the morphology of any feature analyzed by the geologist through the 3D images, and the composition of the same feature, through the hyperspectral data. In general, the merging of data provided by two different instruments may have problems due to co-registration and calibration, and the resolutions may be different requiring some interpolation. HYPSOS solves this problem by hardware: the images of the stereo channels are oriented in such a way that they are both placed along the same direction. In this way it is possible to use the same spectrometer for both channels, eventually leaving some space between the two channels to avoid signal contamination. This configuration is achieved by the placement of simple field rotating prisms along the optical paths of the two stereo-channels. A further advantage of this approach is that it does not require to limit the spectral range, which is otherwise necessary to avoid the superposition of spectra obtained by using two slits separated along track. In this paper we provide details on the configuration of the instrument, the optical layout of a possible implementation, and the resulting performances.
The STereo Imaging Channel (STC) is one of the three channels of the SIMBIO-SYS instrument on board the BepiColombo ESA spacecraft. The design of the camera consists in a double wide-angle camera with two sub-channels looking at ±20° with respect to the nadir direction. Each sub-channel can acquire three quasi-contiguous areas of the Mercury surface in different colours determined by the filters mounted on the detector. The filters are divided in two categories: 4 broad band filters (20 nm of bandwidth and centred at 420, 550, 750 and 920 nm respectively) necessary to the chemical analysis of the Hermean surface; 2 panchromatic (PAN) filters with 200 nm of bandwidth and centred at 600 nm, designed for the stereo acquisition. The nominal Field of View (FoV) of each sub-channel is 5:38°x4:8°. The in-flight stellar calibration will be performed during the nominal mission using stellar fields images. To effectively plan this calibration activity, two analyses have been performed: the first one consists in simulating the observation of stars having different apparent magnitude to derive the best integration time needed to reach a specific Signal to Noise Ratio. Considering the characteristics of the STC camera and of its CMOS detector, the threshold magnitude needed for a star to be detectable will also be determined. The second part consists in selecting the stellar fields from the ESA GAIA archive and Tycho stellar catalogue that contain a pre-defined minimum number of stars required to perform the in-flight geometrical calibration. This selection have been performed taking into account stars brighter than the threshold defined in the first part.
On December 2018, the Near Earth Commissioning Phase (NECP) has been place forSIMBIO-SYS (Spectrometers and Imagers for MPO BepiColombo Integrated Observatory – SYStem), the suite part of the scientific payload of the BepiColombo ESA-JAXA mission. SIMBIO-SYS is composed of three channels: the high resolution camera (HRIC), the stereo camera (STC) and the Vis/NIR spectrometer (VIHI) . During the NECP the three channels have been operated properly. For the three channels were checked the operativity and the performance. The commanded operations allowed to verify all the instrument functionalities demonstrating that all SIMBIO-SYS channels and subsystems work nominally. During this phase we also validated the Ground Segment Equipment (GSE) and the data analysis tools developed by the team.
The STereoscopic imaging Channel (STC) is one of the three channels of SIMBIO-SYS instrument, whose goal is to study the Mercury surface in visible wavelength range. The SIMBIO-SYS instrument is on-board of ESA Bepicolombo spacecraft. STC is a double wide angle camera designed to map in 3D the whole Mercury surface. The detector of STC has been equipped with six filters: two panchromatic and four broad band. The panchromatic filters are centred at 700 nm with 200 nm of bandwidth, while the broad band ones have bandwidth of 20 nm and are centred at 420, 550, 750 and 920 nm, respectively. In order to verify the relative spectral response of each STC sub-channel, a spectral calibration has to be performed during the on-ground calibration campaign. The result consists in the transmissivity curve of each filter of STC as function of wavelength. The camera has been illuminated with a monochromator coupled with a diffuser and a collimator. The images have been acquired by changing the wavelength of the monochromator in the range correspondent to the filter bandwidth. The background images have been obtained by covering the light source and have been used to calculate and subtract the dark signal, fixed pattern noise (FPN) and ambient effects.
The Stereo Channel (STC) is a double wide-angle camera developed to be one of the channels of the SIMBIO-SYS instrument onboard of the ESA BepiColombo mission to Mercury. STC main goal is to map in 3D the whole Mercury surface.
The geometric and radiometric responses of the STC Proto Flight model have been characterized on-ground during the calibration campaign. The derived responses will be used to calibrate the STC images that will be acquired in flight. The aim is to derive the functions that link the detected signal in digital number to the radiance of the target surface in physical units.
The result of the radiometric calibration consists in the determination of well-defined quantities: i) the dark current as a function of the integration time and of the detector temperature, nominally fixed at 268 K; ii) the Read Out Noise, which is associated with the noise signal of the read-out electronic; iii) the Fixed Pattern Noise, which is generated by the different response of each pixel; iv) once these quantities are known, the photon response and the Photo Response Non-uniformity, which represent the variation of the photon-responsivity of a pixel in an array, can be derived.
The final result of the radiometric calibration is the relation between the radiance of an accurately known and uniform source, and the digital numbers measured by the detector.
BepiColombo is the first ambitious, multi-spacecraft mission of ESA/JAXA to Mercury. It will be launched in October 2018 from Kourou, French Guiana, starting a 7-year journey, which will bring its modules to the innermost planet of the solar system.
The Stereo Camera (STC) is part of the SIMBIO-SYS instrument, the Italian suite for imaging in visible and near infrared which is mounted on the BepiColombo European module, i.e. the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO). STC represents the first push-frame stereo camera on board of an ESA satellite and its main objective is the global three-dimensional reconstruction of the Mercury surface.
The harsh environment around Mercury and the new stereo acquisition concept adopted for STC pushed our team to conceive a new design for the camera and to carry out specific calibration activities to validate its photogrammetric performance. Two divergent optical channels converging the collected light onto a unique optical head, consisting in an off-axis telescope, will provide images of the surface with an on-ground resolution at periherm of 58 m and a vertical precision of 80 m.
The observation strategies and operation procedures have been designed to optimize the data-volume and guarantee the global mapping considering the MPO orbit.
Multiple calibrations have been performed on-ground and they will be repeated during the mission to improve the instrument performance: the dark side of the planet will be exploited for dark calibrations while stellar fields will be acquired to perform geometrical and radiometric calibrations.
The ESA-JAXA mission BepiColombo toward Mercury will be launched in October 2018. On board of the European module, MPO (Mercury Planetary Orbiter), the remote sensing suite SIMBIOSYS will cover the imaging demand of the mission. The suite consists of three channels dedicated to imaging and spectroscopy in the spectral range between 420 nm and 2 μm. STC (STereo Imaging Channel) will provide the global three-dimensional reconstruction of the Mercury surface with a vertical accuracy better than 80 m and, as a secondary scientific objective, it will operate in target oriented mode for the acquisition of multi spectral images with a spatial scale of 65 m along-track at the periherm for the first orbit at Mercury. STC consists in 2 sub-channels looking at the Mercury surface with an angle of ±20° with respect to the nadir direction. Most of the optical elements and the detector are shared by the two STC sub-channels and to satisfy the scientific objectives six filters strips are mounted directly in front of the sensor. An off-axis and unobstructed optical configuration has been chosen to enhance the imaging contrast capabilities of the instrument and to allow to reduce the impact of the ghosts and stray light. The scope of this work is to present the on-ground geometric calibration pipeline adopted for the STC instrument. For instruments dedicated to 3D reconstruction, a careful geometric calibration is important, since distortion removal has a direct impact on the registration and the mosaicking of the images. The definition of the distortion for off-axis optical configuration is not trivial, this fact forced the development of a distortion map model based on the RFM (rational function model). In contrast to other existing models, which are based on linear estimates, the RFM is not specialized to any particular lens geometry, and is sufficiently general to model different distortion types, as it will be demonstrated.
The BepiColombo mission represents the cornerstone n.5 of the European Space Agency (ESA) and it is composed of two satellites: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) realized by ESA and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The payload of the MPO is composed by 11 instruments. About half of the entire MPO data volume will be provided by the Spectrometer and Imagers for MPO BepiColombo Integrated Observatory System" (SIMBIO-SYS) instrument suite. The SIMBIO-SYS suite includes three imaging systems, two with stereo and high spatial resolution capabilities, which are the Stereoscopic Imaging Channel (STC) and High Resolution Imaging Channel (HRIC), and a hyper-spectral imager in the Vis-NIR range, named Visible and near Infrared Hyper-spectral Imager (VIHI). In order to test and predict the instrument performances, a radiometric model is needed. It consists in a tool that permits to know what fraction of the incoming light is measured by the detector. The obtained signal depends on the detector properties (such as quantum efficiency and dark current) and the instrument transmission characteristics (transmission of lenses and filter strips, mirrors reflectivity). The radiometric model allows to correlate the radiance of the source and the signal measured by each instrument. We used the Hapke model to obtain the Mercury reflectance, and we included it in the radiometric model applied to the STC, HRIC and VIHI channels. The radiometric model here presented is a useful tool to predict the instruments performance: it permits to calculate the expected optical response of the instrument (the position in latitude and longitude of the filter footprints, the on-ground px dimensions, the on-ground speed, the smearing and the illumination angles of the observed points), and the detector behavior (the expected signal and the integration time to reach a specific SNR). In this work we derive the input flux and the integration times for the three channels of SIMBIO-SYS, using the radiometric model to obtain the source radiance for each Mercury surface area observed.
In the framework of the ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury, the global mapping of the planet will be performed by the on-board Stereo Camera (STC), part of the SIMBIO-SYS suite [1]. In this paper we propose a new technique for the validation of the 3D reconstruction of planetary surface from images acquired with a stereo camera.
STC will provide a three-dimensional reconstruction of Mercury surface. The generation of a DTM of the observed features is based on the processing of the acquired images and on the knowledge of the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the optical system.
The new stereo concept developed for STC needs a pre-flight verification of the actual capabilities to obtain elevation information from stereo couples: for this, a stereo validation setup to get an indoor reproduction of the flight observing condition of the instrument would give a much greater confidence to the developed instrument design.
STC is the first stereo satellite camera with two optical channels converging in a unique sensor. Its optical model is based on a brand new concept to minimize mass and volume and to allow push-frame imaging. This model imposed to define a new calibration pipeline to test the reconstruction method in a controlled ambient. An ad-hoc indoor set-up has been realized for validating the instrument designed to operate in deep space, i.e. in-flight STC will have to deal with source/target essentially placed at infinity.
This auxiliary indoor setup permits on one side to rescale the stereo reconstruction problem from the operative distance in-flight of 400 km to almost 1 meter in lab; on the other side it allows to replicate different viewing angles for the considered targets.
Neglecting for sake of simplicity the Mercury curvature, the STC observing geometry of the same portion of the planet surface at periherm corresponds to a rotation of the spacecraft (SC) around the observed target by twice the 20° separation of each channel with respect to nadir. The indoor simulation of the SC trajectory can therefore be provided by two rotation stages to generate a dual system of the real one with same stereo parameters but different scale.
The set of acquired images will be used to get a 3D reconstruction of the target: depth information retrieved from stereo reconstruction and the known features of the target will allow to get an evaluation of the stereo system performance both in terms of horizontal resolution and vertical accuracy.
To verify the 3D reconstruction capabilities of STC by means of this stereo validation set-up, the lab target surface should provide a reference, i.e. should be known with an accuracy better than that required on the 3D reconstruction itself. For this reason, the rock samples accurately selected to be used as lab targets have been measured with a suitable accurate 3D laser scanner.
The paper will show this method in detail analyzing all the choices adopted to lead back a so complex system to the indoor solution for calibration.
The ESA-JAXA mission BepiColombo that will be launched in 2018 is devoted to the observation of Mercury, the innermost planet of the Solar System. SIMBIOSYS is its remote sensing suite, which consists of three instruments: the High Resolution Imaging Channel (HRIC), the Visible and Infrared Hyperspectral Imager (VIHI), and the Stereo Imaging Channel (STC). The latter will provide the global three dimensional reconstruction of the Mercury surface, and it represents the first push-frame stereo camera on board of a space satellite. Based on a new telescope design, STC combines the advantages of a compact single detector camera to the convenience of a double direction acquisition system; this solution allows to minimize mass and volume performing a push-frame imaging acquisition. The shared camera sensor is divided in six portions: four are covered with suitable filters; the others, one looking forward and one backwards with respect to nadir direction, are covered with a panchromatic filter supplying stereo image pairs of the planet surface. The main STC scientific requirements are to reconstruct in 3D the Mercury surface with a vertical accuracy better than 80 m and performing a global imaging with a grid size of 65 m along-track at the periherm. Scope of this work is to present the on-ground geometric calibration pipeline for this original instrument. The selected STC off-axis configuration forced to develop a new distortion map model. Additional considerations are connected to the detector, a Si-Pin hybrid CMOS, which is characterized by a high fixed pattern noise. This had a great impact in pre-calibration phases compelling to use a not common approach to the definition of the spot centroids in the distortion calibration process. This work presents the results obtained during the calibration of STC concerning the distortion analysis for three different temperatures. These results are then used to define the corresponding distortion model of the camera.
The research group with the responsibility of the STereo Camera (STC) for the ESA BepiColombo mission to Mercury, has realized an innovative and compact camera design in which the light collected independently by two optical channels at ±20° with respect to the nadir direction converges on unique bidimensional detector. STC will provide the 3Dmapping of Mercury surface, acquiring images from two different perspectives. A stereo validation setup has been developed in order to give a much greater confidence to the novel instrument design and to get an on ground verification of the actual accuracies in obtaining elevation information from stereo pairs. A series of stereo-pairs of an anorthosite stone sample (good analogue of the hermean surface) and of a modelled piece of concrete, acquired in calibration clean room by means of an auxiliary optical system, have been processed in the photogrammetric pipeline using image correlation for the 3D model generation. The stereo reconstruction validation has been performed by comparing the STC DTMs (Digital Terrain Models) to an high resolution laser scanning 3D model of the stone samples as reference data. The latter has a much higher precision (ca. 20 μm) of the expected in-lab STC DTM (190 μm). Processing parameters have been varied in order to test their influence on the DTM generation accuracy. The main aim is to define the best illumination conditions and the process settings in order to obtain the best DTMs in terms of accuracy and completeness, seeking the best match between the mission constraints and the specific matching aspects that could affect the mapping process.
High resolution DTMs, suitable for geomorphological studies of planets and asteroids, are today among the main
scientific goals of space missions. In the framework of the BepiColombo mission, we are experimenting the use of
different matching algorithms as well as the use of different geometric transformation models between stereo pairs,
assessing their performances in terms of accuracy and computational efforts. Results obtained with our matching
software are compared with those of established software. The comparison of the performance of image matching being
the main objective of this work, all other steps of the DTM generation procedure have been made independent of the
matching software by using a common framework. Tests with different transformation models have been performed
using computer generated images as well as real HiRISE and LROC NAC images. The matching accuracy for real
images has been checked in terms of reconstruction error against DTMs of Mars and the Moon published online and
produced by the University of Arizona.
The Stereo Camera (STC) of the SIMBIO-SYS imaging suite of the BepiColombo ESA mission to Mercury is based on
an innovative and compact design in which the light independently collected by two optical channels at ±20° separation
with respect to nadir falls on a common bidimensional detector. STC adopts a novel stereo acquisition mode, based on
the push-frame concept, never used before on a space mission. To characterize this camera for obtaining the most
accurate data of the Mercury surface, standard calibration measurements have been performed. In addition, we also
wanted to demonstrate and characterize the capability of the instrument to reconstruct a 3D surface with the desired
accuracy by means of the stereo push-frame concept. To this end, a lab setup has been realized with an evaluation model
of STC, in which the problem of working at an essentially infinite object distance over hundred km baselines has been
overcome by means of a simple collimator and two precision rotators. The intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the
camera have been obtained with standard stereo procedures, adapted to the specific case. The stereo validation has been
performed by comparing the shape of the target object accurately measured by laser scanning, with the shape
reconstructed by applying the adopted stereo algorithm to the acquired image pairs. The obtained results show the
goodness of this innovative validation technique, that will be applied also for validating the stereo capabilities of STC
flight model.
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