A Teledyne Brown Engineering-built sensor system will soon be sending images from the International Space Station.

Teledyne Technologies announced the successful launch of the DLR Earth Sensing Imaging Spectrometer (DESIS) to the International Space Station (ISS) on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Over the next three months, the DESIS instrument, designed and built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), will be installed and tested on Teledyne Brown Engineering’s Multi-User System for Earth Sensing (MUSES) aboard ISS.

“Our partnerships with NASA and DLR expand the commercial use of the ISS and will provide our Governments with unique imaging data,” said Robert Mehrabian, Teledyne Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “Leveraging the infrastructure of the International Space Station and the remaining available payloads on MUSES, we hope for additional opportunities to support cost effective development and installation of other instruments designed for low earth orbit observation missions.”

DESIS, a hyperspectral sensor system, was designed, developed and built in Huntsville. With continuous coverage at an altitude approximately 250 miles above the Earth, the DESIS instrument will broaden our knowledge about agriculture, biodiversity, geology, water ecosystems and detect natural or man-made changes to the Earth’s

Systems aboard the MUSES have the flexibility to be returned to Earth for repair, refurbishment or replacement and then sent back to the platform for further use and testing. This unique return capability will allow DESIS to be returned to Earth after its lifespan of five to eight years for examination to determine the effects of exposure to space conditions.

“Our vision was to create partnerships with DLR, NASA, CASIS and others to enable MUSES and the ISS to expand capabilities to view and assess the earth’s surface,” said TBE President Jan Hess. “We are ecstatic to get the DESIS in place as MUSES’s first payload and have the ability to share its data with the world’s science and commercial communities.”

The MUSES platform, coupled with DESIS, will assist in the advancement of Earth imaging, mapping, disaster recovery and agricultural assessments. Hyperspectral data from DESIS will also enable the DLR institutes to build new earth observation applications for areas such as commercial applications and precision farming.

Teledyne’s MUSES platform was developed as part of a cooperative agreement with NASA to create opportunities for both government and commercial applications such as imaging, technology demonstration, and space qualification payloads supporting research, scientific studies and humanitarian efforts.