Mercury and Vesta - Preliminary shape and topography

This year two spacecraft, MESSENGER and Dawn, were placed into orbit around Mercury and the asteroid Vesta, respectively. We have been using stereophotoclinometry (SPC) to analyze MESSENGER and Dawn images both for navigation and to determine the precise shapes and topography of these bodies. Because SPC requires images at different local Sun elevations and azimuths to distinguish between albedo and topographic variations, Mercury presents the challenges of a slow spin rate and a long solar day. Vesta, on the other hand, rotates more than four times per Earth day, allowing a given area of surface to be viewed under rapidly changing illumination and topographic information to be built up rapidly. The essence of SPC is that small pieces of surface called maplets and modeled with digital elevation and albedo are illuminated and correlated with images. Hundreds of these maplets are found in each image, providing a valuable data type for spacecraft navigation. Hundreds of images go into the construction of each maplet, and the resulting multi-image stereo over a wide range of viewing conditions provides a precise determination of the maplet's body-fixed position. The construction of topography with SPC uses each pixel, allowing resolutions comparable to the images themselves. Mercury's topography varies by about 5 km above and below that of a sphere of radius 2440 km. We compare the SPC-derived shape and topography with data from MESSENGER's Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA). Vesta, although a tenth of Mercury's size, exhibits variations in elevation between 17 km below and 12 km above the equipotential that best matches its surface. The lowest areas lie on the floor of the south polar impact crater, and the highest points lie on the crater's rim.