Abstract The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft orbited the near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu to characterize prior sampling. One important aspect of this characterization was creation a high-resolution (5–7 cm) global shape model using OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA). We describe data collected by OLA, along with ...

We present an innovative way to autonomously classify LiDAR points into bare earth, building, vegetation, and other categories. One of the most desired commodities for LiDAR collection is a high resolution bare earth product with the same resolution as the input data. The LiteSite algorithm automatically extracts buildings and foliage from an urban scene and generates an accurate bare-earth pro...

Three methodologies for correcting the radar reflectivity factor (ZH) in the presence of partial beam blockage are implemented, compared, and evaluated using a polarimetric radar dataset from the North American Monsoon Experiment (NAME) in northwestern Mexico. One methodology uses simulated interactions between radar beams and digital terrain maps, while the other two invoke the self-consistenc...

Global flood hazard models have recently become a reality thanks to the release of open access global digital elevation models, the development of simplified and highly efficient flow algorithms, and the steady increase in computational power. In this commentary we argue that although the availability of open access global terrain data has been critical in enabling the development of such model...

SAR interferometry is a promising and sophisticated technique by which two SAR images of the same scene, acquired from two consecutive passes of the carrying satellite platform, are brought into interference for generating a digital terrain model of the observed surface. Due to the difference in viewing angles and to a non-strict parallelism of the orbits at the times of acquisition, correspond...

The advantages of using the fundamental topographic features of a surface namely the peaks, pits, passes, ridges and channels as the observers (viewpoints) in visibility computation is presented. Considerable time can be saved without any significant information loss by using the fundamental topographic features as observers in the terrain. This optimisation is achieved because of a reduced num...

The initial application of VPE is visualization of the surface of Mars. The data used in our . W geometric model has been measured, not synthesized, and it represents the entire surface of the planet e use digital terrain data derived from images that were transmitted from NASA’s Viking orbiter t satellites and processed by the U. S. Geological Survey. VPE can also be operated with any other di...

This paper presents an intuitive approach for the rapid generation of arbitrary high resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEM) of moon-like surfaces, with minimal required extra expertise. It combines manual terrain shaping in a soil bin with automatic generation of 3 mm resolution DEMs. The generated DEMs are upscaled to 0.3 m resolution and integrated into lower-resolution DEMs of the lunar s...

We seek to understand and correct shading artifacts caused by varying solar illumination conditions and different viewing angles in remotely sensed images. A synthetic image simulating the shading effects for the sun angle and viewing angle as a real image, is generated using a terrain reflectance model and digital elevation data. A good correlation is obtained between the real and synthetic im...