ISPRS WG IV/7 "Planetary Mapping and Databases" successfully organized a workshop at the Technical University in Berlin involving 41 participants, September 18-19, 2009. Participants included representatives from China, Japan, the US, and Britain. There were four oral sessions including 17 oral talks and an interactive session with 9 poster presentations. An abstract book was distributed among the attendees. In addition, there were organized visiting tours to the Institute of Planetary Research of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) before and after the workshop and student attendees were given the opportunity to carry out practical work at DLR [http://www.igg.tu-berlin.de/ISPRS/workshop_6-7/]. This meeting offered the opportunity to review the state of science and technology in many aspects of planetary mapping.

New results from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission were a main topic during the meeting: two oral talks and one poster contribution were presented by American and German workshop participants. Greg Neumann (USA) explained the functioning of the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) and presented first Digital Terrain Models (DTM). Frank Scholten (Germany) presented the first global DTM at an effective scale of a few hundred meters derived from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) WAC (Wide Angle Camera) stereo images, whereas Jürgen Oberst (Germany) presented a high resolution DTM (1m) derived from LROC NAC (Narrow Angle Camera) stereo data.

In November 2009, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) released data from the lunar explorer Kaguya (SELENE) derived during the nominal operation phase (from December 21, 2007 to October 31, 2008) to the public. Junya Terazono from the University of Aizu (Japan) described in his talk the data from Kaguya and presented a Web-based GIS system for Kaguya data queries and analysis.

Mars Express (MEX) has been in the Mars orbit since early 2004. The mapping with the multi-look High Resolution pushbroom Stereo Camera (HRSC) and the SRC (Super Resolution Channel) is a continuing focus of our ISPRS working group. Klaus Gwinner (Germany) reported on the results of mapping the surface of Mars by high-resolution DTMs up to 50 m grid spacing and orthoimages having up to 12.5 m resolution. At the time of writing processing has been accomplished until orbit number 3285. The data cover about 45.9 Mio km2, i.e. 31.6% of Mars.

Shih-Yuan Lin (University College London) developed a co-registration process to co-align multiple sets of DTMs from multi-sensors in multi-resolution collected by various Mars exploration missions over the last decade. These products derived from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA), the HRSC, the Context Camera (CTX) and the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) provide detailed topographic information and are invaluable for scientists to interpret and understand the geological and climate evolution of Mars.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) arrived at Mars on 10 March 2006 and began its primary science mission in November, with its prime mapping instrument being the HiRISE. This instrument can obtain stereo image pairs and is expected to cover up to 1% of the surface by the end of the nominal mission in 2010. During our working group meeting, Randy Kirk (USA) could demonstrate an algorithm to model and remove camera jitter from the HiRISE images. Following appropriate corrections, image geometric distortions are much reduced. This method has already been used to improve the DTM production. Similar processing may be applied to images of the Moon from the LROC NAC camera.

Alexander Lobanov together with two colleagues from the Moscow State University for Geodesy and Cartography in Russia reported about their joined Russian and Hungarian project to build up "The International Planetary Cartography Database" (IPCD) as an online collection of recent Russian and historic Soviet planetary maps and globes published in various languages. Also, he gave an overview about the planned Russian mission Phobos-Grunt and the required tasks in preparation of this challenging mission in 2011.

Procedures for deriving DTMs from stereo images obtained by the MESSENGER NAC have been developed by Frank Preusker (Germany). As a result, a DTM with an effective spatial resolution of 1km was produced from 208 stereo images covering the Caloris basin, the largest well-preserved impact basin on Mercury.

The Cassini Imaging Science Sub-system (ISS) acquired large volumes of high-resolution images (< 1km/pixel) during close flybys of Rhea in 2005 and 2007. Thomas Roatsch and his colleagues from the German Aerospace Center combined these images to a high-resolution Rhea atlas at a scale of 1:1,500,000. This Rhea atlas is the final part in the set of atlases of the medium-sized satellites of Saturn. The atlases of the Saturnian satellites are available to the public through the Cassini Imaging Team's website (http://ciclops.org/maps/).

Two slots of the oral session were dedicated the GIS data base development and processing techniques of rover data. A Lunar Astronaut Spatial Orientation and Information System (LASOIS) is in development based on an integrated sensor network and advanced spatial information technologies. It will provide astronauts with a "GPS-like" system for navigation information.

Participants of the "Planetary Mapping and Databases" Workshop in the Atrium of the Technical University Berlin.

Poster viewing in the Atrium of the Technical University during the break.