A three-year mission to peer into the top 2 inches of soil around the planet and determine its moisture content from space blasted off early Saturday morning.
Quite literally: NASA launched the first satellite for the soil monitoring program Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base after several days of delays and months of planning.
The satellite will record dirt-level data around the planet from more than 400 miles away in space.
Scientists say the mission, called the Soil Moisture Active Passive observatory (SMAP), will improve long-term climate and short-term weather forecasts and allow scientists to better monitor drought and predict floods caused by severe rainfall and snowmelt.
Better data on the amount of water in the soil will also help scientists forecast crop yields and gain early warning on possible famines.
“Scientists and policymakers will use SMAP data to track water movement around our planet and make more informed decisions in critical areas like agriculture and water resources,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.
The satellite will orbit the earth from pole to pole every 98.5 minutes and will take measurements of the planet’s equatorial regions every three days and of higher latitudes every two days.
Instruments on the satellite will be able to see through clouds and vegetation day and night to get the most accurate readings on soil moisture levels ever obtained from space.
Using satellite measurements on where and when the ground is frozen and thawed, scientists will also examine changes in the length of the growing season and variations in the timing of global spring thaws to figure out how much carbon plants remove from the atmosphere.
“SMAP will improve the daily lives of people around the world,” said Simon Yueh, the project’s scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. It “has the potential to significantly improve the accuracy of short-term weather forecasts and reduce the uncertainty of long-term projections of how climate change will impact Earth’s water cycle.”
During the next 90 days, the satellite will deploy its measuring equipment and refine its orbit. Within about nine months, scientists will release the first round of data, with more fully-validated data coming within 15 months.
Contact the writer: aorlowski@ocregister.com
