Image and Data Processing for InSight Lander Operations and Science

The Instrument Site Selection and deployment for the upcoming Mars InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) Lander is highly dependent on image products, particularly mosaics, created from the Instrument Deployment Camera (IDC) and Instrument Context Camera (ICC). When data are downlinked, the Multimission Image Processing Lab (MIPL) at JPL will process image and instrument data to aid in the deployment and monitoring of these instruments. MIPL's functions include raw telemetry processing, stereo correlation, mosaic generation, terrain mesh generation, radiometric correction, pointing correction (bundle adjustment), and the creation of products such as instrument deployment maps, surface normal products, slope products, XYZ point clouds, and roughness map layers. A software pipeline performs systematic, automated execution of the programs that create these products on every image and stereo pair received, while the pointing correction and most mosaics are hand-generated by the MIPL team members for testing and surface operations. Several mission operations software packages are used to view, query, and analyze the processed images and mosaics for placing the main science instruments for the mission.