Geometric stability of the Return Beam Vidicon System on Landsat-3

Landsat-3, launched on March 5, 1978, carries an RBV system different from the one on Landsats-1 and -2. This system consists of two RBV cameras which image adjacent subscenes with some overlaps. In this paper an attempt is made to investigate the geometric stability of this system by trying to recover the interior orientation elements of its cameras from 8 images of 4 subscenes taken about 6 months apart, by applying orbital constraints supplied by NASA. Geometric stability could not be conclusively proved inasmuch as the standard deviations of the recovered interior orientation parameters were unacceptably large. However, sufficiently small root mean square errors were obtained (4.77 microns to 7.98 microns) to conclude that the system may be considered geometrically stable for practical photogrammetric applications and mapping purposes.