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WAOSS was developed for the Russian Mars- 96 
mission with DARA sponsoring taking into account 
its major development drivers: 
e different scientific objectives like 
- synoptic imaging of the weather phenomena 
with coarse ground resolution 
- global topographical mapping with good ground 
resolution 
e real time control of the camera parameters in the 
highly elliptical orbit around Mars 
e severe restriction of data rates and data volumes 
e High reliability for at least 2 years 
e low mass, volume, and power consumption 
budgets 
The modular design and the programmability of all 
essential performance features of the camera allow 
to adapt the camera to different scientific tasks and 
to different mission and spacecraft requirements 
rather easily. 
For Earth related airborne applications of a three- 
line stereo camera, only the mass, volume, and 
power consumption restrictions are of high 
importance. That was the reason why the Wide 
Angle Airborne Camera WAAC was derived from 
the modular WAOSS design allowing flexible 
imaging conditions including high data rate and high 
data volume applications[2]. 
Table 1 shows the camera parameters of both 
cameras. The higher size, mass, and power 
consumption values of the WAOSS are mainly due 
to the necessity of could redundancy. 
The modularity of the WAAC gives the possibility to 
replace modules in order to adapt WAAC to 
different tasks and to test novel technologies. 
Though, the stereo camera WAAC is anticipated to 
- fulfil topographic mapping tasks 
- to support the data interpretation of instruments 
with other wavelengths, e.g. RADAR, 
IR- instruments,... 
- to test novel technology approaches by replacing 
modules and components from the optics to the 
external interfaces 
The main advantage of the WAOSS/WAAC over 
conventional photographic cameras are 
- wide field of view of 80? with neglectable 
geometric distortions over the whole range 
- high radiometric dynamic covering 11bit (2048 
gray levels) 
- generation of digital data which allows to process 
the image data on digital computers and to use 
the data in GIS immediately. 
Further advantages of this camera family are: 
- the flexibility for different applications 
- good performance parameters implemented in 
small size camera systems with low power 
consumption. 
The camera WAOSS will be launched to Mars in 
November 1996. So Mars images are not available 
yet . But WAOSS as well as WAAC are currently 
tested in airborne and ground based experiments. 
In the following part some example images are 
shown coming from airborne experiments with 
WAOSS and WAAC and showing the main features 
of these cameras: 
- wide field of view (80°) 
- high radiometric dynamic (11bit) 
- stereo capability. 
3. CAMERA APPLICATIONS 
Figure 2 shows results from an airborne experiment 
with WAOSS. This image was taken during a flight 
over Berlin in the area of the radio tower and the 
Berlin Congress Centre in July, 1995, on board of a 
Do228 from an altitude of 3000m. The flight attitude 
dependent failures are not corrected yet. The image 
size is about 1800x1000 pixels. With a ground pixel 
size of Imx1m, it covers an area of l.8kmxlkm. 
  
Figure 2 The WAOSS image of the area around the Berlin Congress Centre 
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B1. Vienna 1996