Causes of geometric distortion in space shuttle imagery of targets on the Earth's surface are analysed. A mathematical model formulating the geometric distortion caused by the incidence angle and the local azimuth angle are derived, and the corresponding image processing scheme for orthorectification is developed. The method is used for rectifying two sequential space shuttle photographs of continental shelf waters off the coast of south-west Africa taken by the space shuttle Atlantis during mission STS-36 in March 1990. The results indicate that mismatches between coastline images in unrectified photographs and a standard map have been almost eliminated in the rectified photographs, and the two photographs also match each other very well. Application of the spatial Fourier transform to oceanic internal wave packet signals at a selected test site yields directional wavenumber spectra, from which components of the wave field, the dominant wavelength, and propagation directions are determined. Comparisons between wavelengths and propagation directions derived from the spectra of the same site on the rectified and unrectified photographs show that the average rectification ratio for wavelengths reaches 20 per cent, and for propagation directions 10 per cent, including a 20 per cent rectification ratio for the crossing angle of the internal waves.