Traditional manual mapping methods face crucial challenges in ensuring favorable observation conditions in difficult mapping areas in the Antarctic.This study proposes a large-scale block adjustment(BA)method without ground control points(GCP)using high-resolution optical satellite remote sensing images.This method mainly includes constructing an adjustment model based on virtual control points(VCPs),implementing a multilevel gross error detection and elimination strategy,and providing a robust and fast solution of large-scale BA equations accelerated by a GPU device.To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method,an experimental analysis was conducted using 39 images obtained from the ZiYuan-3 satellite images in the Antarctic.The experimental results indicate that sparse matrix storage technology can effectively reduce memory requirements,and the GPU parallel computing method can address efficiency problem in solving large-scale adjustment parameters.The accuracy of the proposed method reaches the subpixel level after the BA procedure,fully meeting the requirements of cartographic mosaicing.