SMOS

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For the Australian minister, see Special Minister of State.

The SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) mission is the second selected Earth Explorer Opportunity Mission (Cryosat being the first) developed by the European Space Agency (ESA).

SMOS is intended to demonstrate the observation of two key environmental variables: Soil moisture and ocean salinity. The SMOS payload is MIRAS (Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis), a 2-dimensional L-band interferometric passive radiometer. It will primarily measure brightness temperature fields from which 3 to 5 cm soil moisture[1] and sea surface salinity will be derived as level 2 products.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Kerr, Y.H.; P. Waldteufel, J.-P. Wigneron, J. Martinuzzi, J. Font, M. Berger (August 2001). "Soil moisture retrieval from space: the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission". Geoscience and Remote Sensing, IEEE Transactions on 39 (8): 1729-1735. 

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