America
NASA set for first Earth-observing mission launch
Washington, Jan 25
NASA is set for Jan 29
launch of the first US Earth-observing satellite designed to collect
global observations of surface soil moisture.
The agency's Soil
Moisture Active Passive mission (SMAP) will lift off from Space Launch
Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on a United Launch
Alliance Delta II rocket, the US space agency said in a statement.
SMAP will provide high resolution, space-based measurements of soil moisture and its state - frozen or thawed.
This
will allow scientists to better predict natural hazards of extreme
weather, climate change, floods and droughts and help reduce
uncertainties in our understanding of the Earth's water, energy and
carbon cycles.
The mission will map the entire globe every two to
three days for at least three years and provide the most accurate and
highest-resolution maps of soil moisture ever obtained.
The spacecraft will orbit the Earth once every 98.5 minutes and repeat the same ground track every eight days.
Scientists
will for the first time get a bird's-eye view of drought patterns; for
instance, they will watch where droughts begin and end, and how droughts
spread across large areas.
The mission is planned to last three
years, at a cost of $916 million (including launch), but the instruments
could last several years longer.
The soil moisture maps will help farmers who depend on rain to irrigate crops.
The
SMAP satellite's most prominent feature is its rotating mesh antenna,
which measures nearly six metres across - the largest ever deployed in
space.