Imaging Simulator and Geometric Image Stitching for a Low Earth Orbit Satellite with High Spin Rates

Abstract

ESTCube-2 is a low-earth orbit satellite with the main mission of deploying and testing an electrically charged tether and a secondary mission of photographing ground vegetation. The tether deployment and maintaining its separation from the satellite requires a very high spin rate, which poses too many challenges to the imaging system for it to be viable in its current state. In an attempt to resolve this issue, a novel image morphing and stitching algorithm was developed that uses geometric mapping for reconstruction. The proposed method was tested on a specifically made simulation environment that mimics predefined camera parameters. The stitching algorithm was verified to perform within acceptable margins even when expected high spin distortion models were applied.