AstroSplat: Physics-Based Gaussian Splatting for Rendering and Reconstruction of Small Celestial Bodies

ArXi:2603.11969v1 Announce Type: new Image-based surface reconstruction and characterization are crucial for missions to small celestial bodies (e.g., asteroids), as it informs mission planning, navigation, and scientific analysis. Recent advances in Gaussian splatting enable high-fidelity neural scene representations but typically rely on a spherical harmonic intensity parameterization that is strictly appearance-based and does not explicitly model material properties or light-surface interactions. We.