Correction of Attitude Fluctuation of Terra Spacecraft Using ASTER/SWIR Imagery With Parallax Observation

Abstract

Accurate attitude estimation of spacecrafts is the main requirement to provide good geometric performance of remote-sensing imagery. The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer/short-wave-infrared subsystem has six linear-array sensors arranged in parallel, and each line scans the same ground target with a time interval of 356.238 ms between neighboring bands. The registration performance between bands becomes worse when attitude fluctuation occurs during a time lag between observations. Since the time resolution of the line scan is higher than that of the attitude information provided from the satellite, attitude data are estimated with a high frequency. We succeeded in correcting the image-registration error using the revised attitude information. As a result, the image distortion of 0.2 pixels caused by spacecraft-attitude jitter is reduced to less than 0.08 pixels, showing that band-to-band registration errors of a sensor with parallax observation are available to improve the image distortion caused by attitude fluctuation.