NASA has selected a Teledyne Technologies subsidiary to integrate a hyperspectral imaging technology with the Multi-User System for Earth Sensing platform.
Teledyne Brown Engineering will also provide captured imagery to NASA through the multi-year, $15 million contract, the company said Monday.
The German Aerospace Center developed the MUSES spectrometer to collect approximately 27 million square miles of data from the International Space Station each year.
“The volume of hyperspectral data expected to be obtained will assist NASA scientists with a variety of applications in forestry and agricultural management, atmospheric research, and other areas of scientific and humanitarian importance,” said Robert Mehrabian, Teledyne’s chairman, president and CEO.
NASA and Teledyne expect MUSES to become operational in 2016 and start imagery collection in 2017.
According to Teledyne, the platform could accommodate up to three additional Earth-observing instruments for government or commercial imaging use.