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Teledyne Brown Engineering operates the DLR (German Aerospace Center) Earth Sensing Imaging Spectrometer (DESIS). DESIS is a push broom, hyperspectral sensor currently installed on the Multi-User System for Earth Sensing (MUSES) platform on the International Space Station. DESIS has the capability of recording hyperspectral image data using 235 closely arranged channels spanning visual to infrared wavelengths (between 400 and 1,000 nanometers) with a spatial resolution of 30 m while the space station is in an orbital altitude of 400 km.

Authorized Data Use and Users

All members of the U.S. Government have access to DESIS data and imagery for scientific use.

End User License Agreement

DESIS EULA

Obtaining Data

Requesting DESIS data:

  • Contact CSDA and provide a name, email address, and other pertinent information (grant number, contract number, etc.) for data access approval and accept Teledyne Brown Engineering’s EULA
  • After acceptance, you will receive instructions from Teledyne Brown Engineering for creating an account on its TCloudHost
  • You can then search and request your specific area of interest (AOI) using the TCloudHost portal for both catalog and tasking orders
  • You will receive a data download URL via email when your request is ready

Requests for Specific Data Capture

U.S. Government-funded researchers can submit requests for DESIS imagery to be captured on-demand for specific dates and locations. Requests can be submitted through TCloudHost’s tasking interface. CSDA will review the request and Teledyne Brown Engineering will process approved requests. Users will be notified once the tasking data are available to download. For more information, visit the TCloud Help Center.

DESIS Overpass/Revisit Opportunities for Area of Interest

Please see the MUSES-DESIS World-Wide Assessment Chart (PDF) for more information.

Copyright

Data products and derivatives must contain copyright markings as specified below, where YYYY is the year of the image acquisition.

  • For DESIS data: “© Teledyne Brown Engineering, Inc., YYYY. All Rights Reserved.”
  • For derivatives: "Includes copyrighted material of Teledyne Brown Engineering, Inc., All Rights Reserved.”
  • A joint copyright notice may be used as appropriate

Authorized users should send Teledyne Brown Engineering a courtesy copy of any publications that include the downloaded data.

CSDA Acknowledgment

To help us identify your publications, we request that when you publish using these data, please include the following acknowledgment:

"This work utilized data made available through the NASA Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program."

Teledyne Brown Engineering Commercial Data
DESIS Performance Specifications
Parameter DESIS values (Commissioning Phase)
Orbit (type, local time at equator, inclination, altitude, period, repeat cycle) not Sun-synchronous, various, 51.6°, 405 ± 5 km, 93 min, no repeat cycle
Coverage 55° N to 52° S
Tilt (across-track, along-track) -45° to +5°, -40° to +40° by MUSES and DESIS
Sensor pointing ±15° along-track to enable BRDF or Stereo acquisitions
Spectral coverage 402 nm to 1000 nm
Number of spectral channels 235 (no binning) ~2.5nm
118 (binning 2)
79 (binning 3)
60 (binning 4) ~10nm, this product will be available June 2019
Defective spectral channels Bands 1–7 (no binning)
Bands 1–4 (binning 2)
Bands 1–3 (binning 3)
Bands 1–2 (binning 4)
Spectral sampling resolution 2.55 nm (w/o binning); ~10.2 nm (binning 4)
Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM) ~3.5 nm (w/o binning); ~10.0 nm (binning 4)
Radiometric resolution 12 bits + 1 bit gain
Radiometric accuracy +/-10% (based on on-ground calibration and with the support of inflight radiometric calibration)
Radiometric linearity 99%
Swath 30 km
Spatial resolution, pixels 30 m, 1024 pixels (@400 km)
Geometric accuracy ~20 m with GCPs1
~300 m - 400 m w/o GCPs
MTF @ Nyquist 30%–40% based on on-ground calibration / static MTF without smearing effects / wavelength depending
Signal-to-Noise ratio (albedo 0.3 @ 550 nm) 195 (w/o binning)
386 (4 binning)
(based on on-ground calibration)
Dark/Read noise (electrons) 30–60e- (global shutter)
15–30e- (rolling shutter)
Quantum scale equivalent (e-/DN) 0.04 e-/DN
Max frame rate 235Hz (@235 spectral lines, rolling shutter)
117Hz (@235 spectral lines, global shutter)
Solar zenith angle restrictions
(for L2A level processing)		 > 55° produces reduced quality L2A product
> 65° produces low quality L2A product
> 70° not processable to L2A

1 with respect to global reference Landsat ETM+ PAN with GSD 14 m.

Last Updated
Sep 26, 2023