A method for asteroids 3D surface reconstruction from close approach distances

Abstract

We present a procedure for asteroids 3D surface reconstruction from images for close approach distances. Different from other 3D reconstruction scenario from spacecraft images, the closer flyby gave the chance to revolve around the asteroid shape and thus acquiring images from different viewpoints with a higher baseline. The chance to have more information of the asteroids surface is however paid by the loss of correspondences between images given the larger baseline. In this paper we present a procedure used to reconstruct the 3D surface of the asteroid 21 Lutetia encountered by Rosetta spacecraft on July the 10th of 2010 at the closest approach distance of 3170 Km. It was possible to reconstruct a wider surface even dealing with strong ratio of missing data in the measurements. Results show the reconstructed 3D surface of the asteroid as a sparse 3D mesh. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.