What are the benefits of having multiple camera angles?
Measuring the reflectance of a target from different directions is really useful because geophysical media (the atmosphere, including the clouds and aerosols, the ocean, and terrestrial surfaces such as soil, vegetation and snow or ice) reflect solar light differently in different directions. In fact, the variations between the reflectances acquired from a variety of observation angles can be interpreted (with appropriate models) to document the properties of the target, just as the more familiar spectral differences are exploited to document its chemical composition. Most imaging space-borne instruments acquire measurements for each location on Earth from a single direction at a time, usually within the limited range of (across-track) observation zenith angles allowed by the scanner or push-broom design of the sensor. The accumulation of multiangular observations with such instruments necessitates revisiting the site over rather long periods of time, from multiple days to a few weeks
