Innovative optical setup for testing a stereo camera for space applications

The Stereo Camera (STC) of the SIMBIO-SYS imaging suite of the BepiColombo ESA mission to Mercury is based on an innovative and compact design in which the light independently collected by two optical channels at ±20° separation with respect to nadir falls on a common bidimensional detector. STC adopts a novel stereo acquisition mode, based on the push-frame concept, never used before on a space mission. To characterize this camera for obtaining the most accurate data of the Mercury surface, standard calibration measurements have been performed. In addition, we also wanted to demonstrate and characterize the capability of the instrument to reconstruct a 3D surface with the desired accuracy by means of the stereo push-frame concept. To this end, a lab setup has been realized with an evaluation model of STC, in which the problem of working at an essentially infinite object distance over hundred km baselines has been overcome by means of a simple collimator and two precision rotators. The intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the camera have been obtained with standard stereo procedures, adapted to the specific case. The stereo validation has been performed by comparing the shape of the target object accurately measured by laser scanning, with the shape reconstructed by applying the adopted stereo algorithm to the acquired image pairs. The obtained results show the goodness of this innovative validation technique, that will be applied also for validating the stereo capabilities of STC flight model.