Image Processing for Near Earth Object Optical Guidance Systems

A feature tracking algorithm is described, which is designed to support optical navigation of autonomous spacecraft. The algorithm is based on an existing system designed for use in planetary entry, descent, and landing (EDL) scenarios and includes several extra processing steps aimed at improving the performance. The algorithm is tested against the original by processing synthetic image streams of an asteroid and a lunar-type surface, taking care to use realistic surface reflectance models. The tracked features are processed to extract estimates of the camera motion between frames, and the results are compared with the ground truth to assess the robustness and accuracy of the feature tracking.