First Results of the European Spacelab Photogrammetric Camera Mission

Photogrammetry (photography from aircraft) is now considered the standard topographic data acquisition tool the world over and yet, progress in mapping from aerial photographs is so slow that it has accomplished no more than 40–45% of the desired topographic map coverage at the necessary scales of 1:50 000 or 1:100 000. With existing methods of aerial photogrammetry, it will not be possible to achieve world land coverage at these scales by the year 2000.