PASS PROCESSING AND EXTRAPOLATION OF SPOT IMAGE GEOMETRY

A mathematical model for pass processing of SPOT imagery is formulated. It is based on the fact that during one pass, the image data stream from each of the instruments in SPOT forms one single very long image. The geometry of this extended image can thus be rectified with as few control points as for only one scene if orbital constraints and attitude measurements are properly taken into consideration. SPOT imagery is, however, not available as this single long image, but only sectioned into scenes. This creates problems which are accounted for in the solution. The possibility of gaps in the sequence of scenes is also taken into consideration. Extrapolation over gaps is of special interest and, by investigating attitude variability, it is shown that extrapolation is successful over multiple scene gaps which is also verified in a real data test.