On January 9th, 2012, the Earth Resource Satellite or ‘Ziyuan Ⅲ’, the first civil survey and mapping satellite in China, was successfully launched. The satellite utilizes cutting-edge technology such as a three-linear CCD stereo scanner developed independently by China,. It has entered a sun-synchronous orbit of 500 km above the earth on January 11th and immediately began sending back pictures which can be used for three-dimensional stereo mapping of the earth’s surface, resource surveys, ground utilization and a digital globe.
WHU has been heavily involved both in the research and development and data processing of Ziyuan Ⅲ. Over the last seven years, researchers at WHU have overcome barriers to the project and made contribution to its successful launch.
On January 7th, 2005, WHU Professor Li Deren, a member of China Academy of Sciences and the China Academy of Engineers, proposed to State Council and received support for launching a series of survey and mapping satellites. After that, Prof. Li Deren and Prof. Gong Jianya proposed the major benchmark schedule for creating Ziyuan Ⅲ.
Since 2008, a research group led by WHU Prof. Zhang Zuxun, a member of Chinese Academy of Engineers, began research on data processing technology for Ziyuan III, focusing on the novel technologies such as multiple strips satellite imagery triangulation, digital elevation modeling and digital ortho image generation in order to meet the demand of high precision mapping with satellite data. Technology problems such as parallel dispatching of large-scale systems, high precision geo-referencing, digital elevation model generation, and multi-image fusion were resolved by the research group, which ensured an efficient and stable operation of the senior product generation system.
WHU Prof. Wang Mi lead a group of doctoral and masters students to develop the software used for the receiving and processing of Zhiyuan III’s data and WHU Prof. Zhang Yongjun’s production system completed the first picture processing of the ground imaging. Prof. Wang Mi’s group have even been working in the satellite’s ground station to complete data products and processing as quickly as possible.
