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The NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline (ASP) is a suite of free and open sourceautomated geodesy and stereogrammetry tools designed for processingstereo images captured from satellites (around Earth and otherplanets), robotic rovers, aerial cameras, and historical images, withand without accurate camera pose information.

ASP produces cartographic products, including digital terrain models(DTMs, synonymous with digital elevation models, DEMs),ortho-projected images, 3D models, and bundle-adjusted networks ofcameras. These data products are suitable for science analysis,mission planning, and public outreach.

• ASP is free software released under the Apache Software License 2.0.
• Documentation:https://stereopipeline.readthedocs.io

Precompiled binaries (for Linux and macOS) are available for the stable releasesand the current development build. Simply download the appropriate distributionfor your operating system, extract, and run the executables in thebinsubdirectory.

• Stable releases, daily builds, and conda packages

See theNEWSfor the most recent additions.

To permanently add the ASP executable subdirectory to your PATH,you can add the following line to your shell configuration (e.g.,~/.bashrc), replacing/path/to/StereoPipeline/bin with the locationon your filesystem:export PATH=${PATH}:/path/to/StereoPipeline/bin

ISIS users: Please install the latestUSGS ISIS if you would like to process NASAnon-terrestrial images. Users wishing to process Earth images, such as DigitalGlobe, satellites with RPC cameras, or various frame/pinhole cameras do not needto download anything else. If ASP is installed with conda, it will install ISISin the same environment as well, though it may not be the latest version.

The documentation, in HTML format, is athttps://stereopipeline.readthedocs.io.

The documentation includes a gentle introduction to using the Stereo Pipeline,an entry for each tool, and example processing workflows for many supportedsensors.

The ReStructured Text source files for the documentation are in the docssubdirectory of the ASP distribution.

All bugs, feature requests, user questions, and general discussioncan be posted on theASP support forum.

We also encourage the posting of issues on theGitHub repo (mostsuch items posted on the forum will typically be converted to anissue there for the developers to work on), as well as pull requests.

ASP was developed within the Autonomous Systems and Robotics area ofthe Intelligent Systems Division at NASA's Ames Research Center. Itleverages the Intelligent Robotics Group's (IRG) extensive experiencedeveloping surface reconstruction and tools for planetary exploration(e.g., the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Exploration Rover missions, androver autonomy). It has also been developed in collaboration with theAdaptive Control and Evolvable Systems (ACES) group, and draws ontheir experience developing computer vision techniques for autonomousvehicle control systems.

See thelist of contributors.

In general, please use this reference for the Ames Stereo Pipeline:

Beyer, Ross A., Oleg Alexandrov, and Scott McMichael. 2018. TheAmes Stereo Pipeline: NASA's open source software for deriving andprocessing terrain data, Earth and Space Science, 5.https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EA000409.

If you are using ASP for application to Earth Images, or need a referencewhich details the quality of the output, then we suggest also referencing:

Shean, D. E., O. Alexandrov, Z. Moratto, B. E. Smith, I. R. Joughin,C. C. Porter, Morin, P. J. 2016. An automated, open-source pipelinefor mass production of digital elevation models (DEMs) from veryhigh-resolution commercial stereo satellite imagery. ISPRS Journalof Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 116.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2016.03.012.

In addition to the recommended citation, we ask that you also citethe DOI for the specific version of ASP that you used for processing.Every new release (and daily build) of ASP will have its own uniqueDOI, which can be foundhere.

Additional details for how to cite ASP in your published work can be foundin the ASP documentation.

See LICENSE file for the full text of the license that applies to ASP.

Copyright (c) 2009-2025, United States Government as represented bythe Administrator of the National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration. All rights reserved.

ASP is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. Youmay obtain a copy of the License athttp://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, softwaredistributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express orimplied. See the License for the specific language governingpermissions and limitations under the License.

This distribution may include some bundled third-party software as aconvenience to the user. This software, located in thethirdparty/directory of the source code release, is not covered by theabove-mentioned distribution agreement or copyright. Binary releasesdistribute third party software in both thebin andlibdirectories. See the included documentation for detailed copyright andlicense information for any third-party software or check theTHIRDPARTYLICENSESfile. In addition, various pieces of ASP depend on additionalthird-party libraries that the user is expected to have installed.