Abstract

Lunar exploration has garnered significant attention for decades and the lunar poles have been the next exploration hot spot for the cold trapping of volatiles in the permanent shadowed regions (PSRs) at the lunar poles. Remote sensing through the satellite's optical load is one of the most important ways to get the scientific data of PSRs. However, the illumination conditions at the lunar poles are quite different from the low altitude areas and how to get appropriate optical signal remains challenging. Thus, simulation of the optical remote sensing process, which provide reference for the choice of satellites' imaging parameters to ensure the implementation of lunar exploration project, is of great value. In this paper, we build an imaging chain modelling for the PSRs at lunar south poles, which includes lunar threedimensional topography, observing satellite's orbit, optical load's parameters and other environmental parameters. To demonstrate the physical accuracy of our algorithm, we select some PSRs' observations acquired by narrow angle cameras (NACs) equipped on the lunar reconnaissance orbiter (LRO) and use the proposed imaging chain model to simulate the corresponding images, and the simulation results show good fit with the real-captured images. In addition, we use our model to reveal the impact of lunar soil's reflectance, instrument's focal length, exposure time and operation time. The simulation method will provide valuable reference and assist future optical imaging of PSRs at lunar poles.