Visualization and topographical analysis of the Mars surface

The Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing has more than 30 years of experience in computation, visualization and analysis of digital terrain data. Most of the developed methods and algorithms are implemented in the software application SCOP++ and tested on Earth datasets. Due to the institute's involvement into Mars Express, these methods have been used for non-terrestrial applications for the first time. One of the primary aims has always been the capability to deal with countrywide datasets. So it was no problem to handle the large amount of Mars-related datasets. Nevertheless several changes and adaptations were necessary to use the given algorithms. After an introduction into the used surface interpolation technique, linear prediction, the development of an automated method for the elimination of gross errors from given surface point clouds is described. Examples for applying those methods on Mars orbiter laser altimeter original points are given and visualized as well as analyzed using different hydrological and mathematical analysis methods. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.