View of the International Space Station. Photo: NASA

[Via Satellite 05-27-2014] Teledyne Brown Engineering (TBE), a subsidiary of Teledyne Technologies in Huntsville, Ala., officially formalized its commercial space imaging partnership with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) for use of the International Space Station (ISS) for Earth observation. With the agreement, the DLR will build the DLR Earth Sensing Imaging Spectrometer (DESIS) for Teledyne to integrate onto its Multi-User System for Earth Sensing (MUSES) platform.

The platform will host up to three other observational instruments for commercial applications such as mapping and monitoring forests, maritime domain awareness, oil and gas exploration and natural disaster response. The DESIS instrument will capture Earth imaging from the visible to the near infrared. DLR will use this spectral data for research in atmospheric physics and Earth sciences.

Teledyne and DLR expect the DESIS instrument to be operational on the MUSES platform by 2016. The platform is being developed in a joint agreement between Teledyne and NASA.