Image registration and fusion for NASA remotely sensed imagery

With the increasing importance of multiple platform/multiple NASA remote sensing missions, the integration of digital data from disparate sources has become critical to the success of these endeavors. In the near future, satellite remote sensing systems will provide large amounts of global coverage and repetitive measurements representing simultaneous or multitemporal observations of the same features by different sensors. Furthermore, with the new trend of smaller missions, most sensors will be carried on separate platforms, resulting in a tremendous amount of data that must be combined. In meeting some of the Earth System Science objectives, the combination of all these data at various resolutions: spatial, radiometric and temporal, will allow a better understanding of Earth and space science phenomena. We review some of the most important current and future NASA Earth Science programs and their needs for image registration and fusion. On-going image registration efforts at NASA/Goddard are also described.