NASA Previews New Mission to Track Water in Earth's Soil

NASA held a media briefing on Thursday, Jan. 8, at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC to discuss the upcoming Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission. SMAP, set for a Jan. 29 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, will provide the most accurate, highest-resolution global measurements of soil moisture ever obtained from space and will detect whether the ground is frozen or thawed. The data will be used to enhance scientists' understanding of the processes that link Earth's water, energy and carbon cycles.

The briefing participants were:
-- Christine Bonniksen, SMAP program executive with the Science Mission Directorate’s Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington
-- Kent Kellogg, SMAP project manager with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California
-- Dara Entekhabi, SMAP science team lead, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
-- Brad Doorn, SMAP applications lead, Science Mission Directorate’s Applied Sciences Program at NASA Headquarters

SMAP is the last of five NASA Earth science missions scheduled for launch within a 12-month period. NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing.

[cpjufzz]

Very Important mission, good luck for launch day and the days to install the spacecraft.
Hope all will work out fine, so thus we will understand more and better climate change, global warming and giving our future a very good instrument to understand and monitor what will happen and how the earth is developing under these new climate conditions. 

[jmm]

keeping track of the cycle would be useful using this then whole fleet of radar planes, overall it will save some expense, no more sparatic weather vane type reports from small sections when can map out the entire globe 

[williamtang]

I want some more... LOGICAL comments. No, you are not last.

[jibbione]

SMAP cost:  $916M x 3 yrs. wow. Any offsets on early adapters shared cost?

[miguelbetancur]

Could someone explain me, what is this data going to be used for? I mean, SMAP will provide the most accurate, highest-resolution global measurements of soil moisture, but what could we do knowing that data? could we do changes to our soil by knowing this information(data)? Or "simply" know that climate is affecting our soil?

[erogonemc]

People are mostly H2O, can SMAP locate people as well? prob a dumb

[ezio]

I love listening to the under-informed and over-entertained evaluate science programs and their value to society. In the US, ignorance has become a point of view.  Every hour, taxpayers in the United States are paying $10.54 million for the total cost of wars since 2001 and the F35 program may top $1 trillion.