Teledyne Technologies won an out of this world contract Tuesday.

Thousand Oaks-based Teledyne announced that it won a $15 million contract from NASA on Monday to build a hyper-spectral remote sensing imaging instrument that will be used on the International Space Station. Teledyne makes instrumentation, digital imaging products and software for aerospace and defense systems.

The hyper-spectral instrument is using Teledyne technology, but is being built by the German Aerospace Center. Teledyne expects the instrument to be operational in 2016, with hyper-spectral imagery beginning in 2017.

“The volume of hyper-spectral 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 CEO Robert Mehrabin in a news release.