DESIS – Solving Earth’s Problems from Above DLR Earth Sensing Imaging Spectrometer

Mission Objective

• Depicting the land surface, oceans, and atmosphere.
• The data is very accurate because of its wide spectral range.

Mission Significance

• New information about the surface.
• Monitoring environmental problems.
• Evaluate and improve the dynamic correlations among geophysical factors across continents.

• The 1^st spectrometer was installed in the Multi-User System for Earth Sensing (MUSES) on the ISS (International Space Station).
• The data provided by DESIS should be pretty accurate for various applications.

Methodology Overview

DESIS instrument was constructed by DLR. The hyperspectral instrument can be seen as a push-broom imaging spectrometer, and it has several components that allow its function and special abilities. However, DESIS characteristics are useless without the operating platform – MUSES.

MUSES is a Multi-User System for Earth Sensing. It serves as a platform for hosting Earth-observing instruments. These instruments encompass a range of capabilities, including high-resolution digital cameras and hyperspectral imagers, such as DESIS. MUSES is equipped to accommodate up to four such instruments concurrently, with the added flexibility to swap, enhance, and provide robotic servicing for these payloads.

Mission Benefits

• Agricultural and forest ecosystem management.
• Monitoring vegetation health and stress parameters of the surface
• Assessment of soil degradation.
• Urban development tracking.
• Inland water monitoring, including content and pollution levels.
• Evaluating natural and environmental disasters and coordinating humanitarian responses.
• Developing and enhancing hyperspectral imaging methods and processing techniques.

 

Mission Participants

Main Operator – DLR:

Product development – DLR was responsible for constructing, designing, and calibration of DESIS.

After launch – mission management in full cooperation with TBE.

Main Collaborator – TBE (Teledyne Brown Engineering):

After development – integration into MUSES and operation of MUSES platform.

After launch – Operation, command, and monitoring of DESIS. Since TBE has full and direct access to DESIS data, it’s responsible for its commercial distribution.

Space-X:

The launch – Space-X has fully operated the launch of DESIS.

NASA:

The ISS crew members installed DESIS on the ISS robotic arm.

Since its launch in 2018, DESIS has received vast data from around the globe. The data is not publicly available but can be used for specific scientific purposes through direct request. The raw data from the DESIS mission serves scientists and researchers across various fields, enabling them to make critical decisions that impact life on Earth.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

ACKTAR PARTS: