Using ATCOM to enhance long-range imagery collected by NASA's flight test tracking cameras at Armstrong Flight Research Center

摘要

Located at Edwards Air Force Base, Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) is NASA's premier site for aeronautical research and operates some of the most advanced aircraft in the world. As such, flight tests for advanced manned and unmanned aircraft are regularly performed there. All such tests are tracked through advanced electro-optic imaging systems to monitor the flight status in real-time and to archive the data for later analysis. This necessitates the collection of imagery from long-range camera systems of fast moving targets from a significant distance away. Such imagery is severely degraded due to the atmospheric turbulence between the camera and the object of interest. The result is imagery that becomes blurred and suffers a substantial reduction in contrast, causing significant detail in the video to be lost. In this paper, we discuss the image processing techniques located in the ATCOM software, which uses a multi-frame method to compensate for the distortions caused by the turbulence.