The stereo channel (STC) of the SIMBIO-SYS instrument for the BepiColombo mission to Mercury

BepiColombo is the cornerstone n.5 of ESA, and it will be launched on August 2013. It is composed by two modules: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), and with a suite of instruments which shall allow to perform observations with a level of details considerably improved respect to the NASA's Messenger mission launched in 2004. The SIMBIO-SYS (Spectrometers and Imagers for MPO BepiColombo Integrated Observatory SYStem) instrument is a system integrating a STereoscopic imaging Channel (STC), a High spatial Resolution Imaging Channel (HRIC) and a Visual and Infrared Hyper-spectral Imager channel (VIHI). SIMBIO-SYS has been selected by ESA in the payload of the MPO. The main scientific objective of STC is the global mapping of the entire surface of Mercury in 3D and colors with a maximum spatial resolution of 50 m per pixel. It will allow to generate the Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the entire surface improving the interpretation of morphological features at different scales and topographic relationships.