DEVELOPMENT OF A SPACE MICRO-CAMERA SYSTEM FOR VIDEOGRAMMETRY APPLICATIONS

摘要

The ESA Test Centre at ESTEC in The Netherlands is equipped with a series of environmental test facilities. A key element is the Large Space Simulator (LSS). Recent advances shown by the Industry in the field of CCD cameras for space applications make possible their use in thermal-vacuum conditions on-ground, like in the LSS. An attractive spin-off of such cameras is a "canister-free" videogrammetry system. Videogrammetry is a metrology method for recovering 3-D coordinates of an object from 2-D pictures, therefore well-matched with the use of digital camera technologies. Commercial camera equipment is not adapted for thermal-vacuum, for that reason a canister is used for the camera environmental control. A canister-free system exhibits many advantages, technical and economical. ESTEC started a prototyping phase to apply "off-the-shelf" designs for the development and production of miniaturised videogrammetry equipment. The current effort covers the prototyping and final testing in ambient and thermal-vacuum conditions.