Space Industry and Business News  
Entekhabi Will Lead Science Team For NASA Satellite Mission To Map Earth's Water Cycle

Professor Dara Entekhabi will lead the science team for NASA's Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP) satellite mission, scheduled to launch in Dec. 2012. A 6-meter deployable mesh antenna on the satellite will gather soil moisture and freeze/thaw data across 1,000-kilometer swaths, creating ribbons of measurements around the globe and completing the cycle every few days. GRAPHIC / NASA JPL.
by Denise Brehm
Boston MA (SPX) May 01, 2008
MIT Professor Dara Entekhabi will lead the science team designing a NASA satellite mission to make global soil moisture and freeze/thaw measurements, data essential to the accuracy of weather forecasts and predictions of global carbon cycle and climate. NASA announced recently that the Soil Moisture Active-Passive mission (SMAP) is scheduled to launch December 2012.

At present, scientists have no network for gathering soil moisture data as they do for rainfall, winds, humidity and temperature. Instead, that data is gathered only at a few scattered points around the world.

"Soil moisture is the lynchpin of the water, energy and carbon cycles over land. It is the variable that links these three cycles through its control on evaporation and plant transpiration. Global monitoring of this variable will allow a new perspective on how these three cycles work and vary together in the Earth system," said Entekhabi, director of the Parsons Laboratory for Environmental Science and Engineering in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

"Additionally because soil moisture is a state variable that controls both water and energy fluxes at the land surface, we anticipate that assimilation of the global observations will improve the skill in numerical weather prediction, especially for events that are influenced by these fluxes at the base of the atmosphere," he said.

The SMAP mission is based on an earlier satellite project led by Entekhabi that had been selected by NASA from among 20 proposals and scheduled for a 2009 launch. However, the Hydrosphere State Mission (Hydros) was cancelled abruptly in 2005 when funding for NASA's earth sciences missions was diverted. But in July 2007, the National Research Council recommended that NASA make the soil moisture measurement project a top priority and place it on a fast track for launch.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., is the lead NASA center for the project, with participation from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Md. NASA's lead scientists on the project are Eni Njoku, SMAP project scientist at JPL, and Peggy O'Neill, SMAP deputy project scientist at GSFC.

"Research conducted by MIT faculty and students is at the forefront of SMAP's science objectives, and MIT can play an important role in contributing to the mission's algorithms and science products," said Njoku, who earned his Ph.D. from MIT in 1976. "MIT students have the opportunity to be involved in many aspects of the mission."

SMAP's launch in 2012 is feasible in part because Entekhabi and other scientists continued to develop the mission, even when NASA's support was withdrawn in 2005.

The instruments that will be deployed in SMAP will gather both passive and active low-frequency microwave measurements on a continuous basis, essentially creating a map of global surface soil moisture. A 6-meter deployable mesh antenna on a satellite will gather data across a swath of 1,000 kilometers, creating ribbons of measurements around the globe and completing the cycle every few days.

In addition to measuring soil moisture, the satellite will detect if the surface moisture is frozen. In forests, the freeze/thaw state determines the length of the growing season and the balance between carbon assimilation into biomass and the loss of carbon due to vegetation respiration. The result of this balance can tell scientists if a forest is a net source or net sink of carbon.

One mission obstacle that Entekhabi and team solved last year was integrating the two types of measurements the satellite would gather: passive measurements collected by radiometer, and active collected by radar. The radiometer measurements provide highly accurate data at a coarse resolution of 40 kilometers. The radar measurements provide much higher resolution (3 kilometers), but with less sensitivity. The combination of the two measurements through algorithms designed by the SMAP science team will result in accurate mapping of global soil moisture at 10 km.

Entekhabi is the Bacardi and Stockholm Water Foundations Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

Related Links
Soil Moisture Active-Passive mission (SMAP)
Earth Observation News - Suppiliers, Technology and Application



Memory Foam Mattress Review
Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily
XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News


NASA's Polar satellite ends its mission
Greenbelt, Md., April 29, 2008
The U.S. space agency says its Polar satellite has concluded its 12-year mission to study the Northern and Southern lights.







  • Microsoft takeover deadline for Yahoo expires without comment
  • China world's largest Internet market
  • World's Fastest Satellite Internet Connection To User Terminal Via KIZUNA
  • Microsoft threatens proxy battle against Yahoo

  • Khrunichev And ILS Announce Quality Initiative
  • Kalam Hails ISRO For Satellite Launch
  • Zenit Rocket Puts Israeli Satellite Into Orbit
  • Israeli communications satellite launched

  • Belgian airline says it will cut costs, emissions by slowing down
  • Airbus, Boeing sign accord to cut air traffic impact on environment
  • Oil spike, cost of planes led to Oasis collapse: founders
  • Airbus boss says aviation unfairly targeted over climate change

  • Raytheon Awarded Contract To Upgrade Satellite Communication Terminals
  • General Dynamics And Cisco Systems Advance Battlefield Networking
  • BAE To Develop Military Communications Network
  • 3rd SOPS Makes Historic WGS Transition

  • COM DEV Launches Advanced Space-Based AIS Validation Nanosatellite
  • Loral Spins A Giant Web In Space As First ICO Bird Comes Alive
  • Graphene-Based Gadgets May Be Just Years Away
  • Boost For Green Plastics From Plants

  • NASA names science directorate deputy
  • Northrop Grumman Names Terri Zinkiewicz VP Sector Controller For Its Space Technology Sector
  • Northrop Grumman Appoints Scott Winship To VP And Program Manager - Navy Unmanned Combat Air System
  • NASA Names John Shannon New Space Shuttle Manager

  • Entekhabi Will Lead Science Team For NASA Satellite Mission To Map Earth's Water Cycle
  • NASA's Polar satellite ends its mission
  • Successful Cooperation Extends Dragon Programme
  • NASA Web Tool Enhances Airborne Earth Science Mission

  • Vettro Unveils Mobile SaaS Application For Utilities And Excavation
  • GIOVE-B Spacecraft In Good Health
  • Tele Atlas Logistics To Power Micronet Commercial Routing And Navigation
  • Nokia And ARC Transistance Deliver Real Time Traffic Reports To Mobiles

  • The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright Space.TV Corporation. AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space.TV Corp on any Web page published or hosted by Space.TV Corp. Privacy Statement