Accurate camera calibration and orientation procedures are a necessary prerequisite for the extraction of precise and reliable 3D metric information from images. A camera is considered calibrated if the principal distance, principal point offset and lens distortion parameters are known.
That mainly depends on the "geometrical stability" of your camera and the "careful handling" as well as environmental circumstances. I recommend a calibration for each mission and maybe an on the job self calibration during processing of images.
You can hardly do it too often - depending on your mission profile and precision requirements: a change in ambient conditions (mainly temperature) may affect the geometry of the whole camera. Given the mechanics are stable in themselves, it might be worth considering to acquire a characteristic curve over temperature, then recording the temperature in flight and taking this recorded temperature into account during image evaluation.
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