Multispectral Unit for Land Assessment


The Multispectral Unit for Land Assessment is a planned Filipino satellite dedicated in Earth observation and remote sensing. Upon completion it will become the largest satellite made by Filipinos.

Development

The Philippine Space Agency started the Multispectral Unit for Land Assessment project in 2020 under its Advanced Satellite Program. The preliminary mission objectives of MULA was determined.
PhilSA announced on June 9, 2021, that a satellite is in development that would be bigger than the ones made previously under the Philippine Scientific Earth Observation Microsatellite program.
MULA would be the first of a "next-generation satellites" under the Philippine space program, with the team behind the satellite building on the knowledge gained in developing the Diwata and Maya nanosatellites. The investment cost for the satellite is at least US$34 million.
The satellite project is led by John Leur Labrador and is part of the ASP of the Department of Science and Technology. The University of the Philippines Diliman and DOST-Advanced Science and Technology Institute, in coordination of PhilSA, are the lead entities responsible for MULA's development. It is also co-designed with British firm Surrey Satellite Technology. Filipino engineers who worked on MULA were sent to the United Kingdom for an immersion on satellite design and manufacturing process.
Development was hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Progress continued from 2023. By June 2025, the MULA project is already in the testing phase.

Instruments

MULA will weigh, and will become the largest Filipino-made satellite. It is equipped with a TrueColour camera which has a capability to capture images with a resolution and a wide swatch width of. MULA will also have nine spectral bands for various environmental applications including land cove change mapping, crop monitoring, and disaster and forestry management. It will be designed to be able to take images of roughly of land area daily.
It will also be equipped with Automatic Identification System and Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast which could be used to detect and track aircraft and ships. The satellite will also have a jet propulsion system.

Launch and mission

It was originally planned that MULA would be launched to space by 2023 but this schedule has been postponed to 2025. MULA will be positioned in a sun-synchronous low Earth orbit, and will rotate around the globe ten times daily.
During the 8th Philippine Space Council meeting held in 12 August 2024, President Bongbong Marcos announced that MULA will be launched on a Falcon 9 rocket as part of SpaceX Transporter-16 mission, scheduled for NET February 2026.
As of December 2025, the projected launch date is slated for March 2026.