One the biggest benefits of exploring space is the ability to look right back down at the Earth.
A new space camera being developed as part of collaboration between La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia and the German equivalent of NASA, the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), will let us observe natural phenomena such as storms, droughts and bushfires more clearly.
The platform is called the DLR Earth Sensing Imaging Spectrometer (DESIS), and it will eventually be integrated into the International Space Station's (ISS) own imaging equipment -- the Multi-User System for Earth Sensing (MUSES).
Peter Moar, research fellow at La Trobe University, told Mashable Australia the equipment is a "space-based hyper-spectral camera." It will combine new adaptive optic techniques with specialised post-processing hardware and software to create "new and wonderful" images brimming with information about the Earth's environment.
While he couldn't be too detailed, Moar suggested images taken with DESIS would be a significant advance. "There are new optics in this camera that will allow us to take unique images that haven't been done to date, and that will contain new information," he said.
Images created by the DESIS will predominantly be used to inform global farming strategies and for natural disaster management and minimisation, Moar said. "The camera will be used to provide an update on the state of crops," he said. "It will also analyse damage after floods and hailstorms, and for detecting and monitoring bushfires, and calculating fuel loads in the forest and landscape to help with fire management."
"With Australia's enormous land mass, technologies such as these are crucial for effective natural disaster management," engineer and industry project coordinator, Eddie Custovic, said in a statement.
First, the teams at La Trobe and the DLR need to overcome some significant design challenges. "Creating instrumentation for space is probably the most challenging environment to design for," Moar said. "It's a vacuum ... and there's so much radiation that you have to have what's called space hardened electronics."
DESIS should be ready to launch to the ISS in November if next year, Moar said, when it will likely form part of a larger payload on a craft bound for the station.
Once aboard, there will be a further three-month testing period before it is officially switched on. "By mid-2017, it will be taking some really cool images of the Earth," he predicted.