ESA - SMOS - Mapping soil moisture and ocean salinity

SMOS at a glance

An Earth Explorer

Mapping soil moisture and ocean salinity

Improving our understanding of the water cycle Introducing a novel use of technology Facts and figures

About the satellite

Platform Instrument

About the launch

Launch site Launcher

SMOS in orbit

After liftoff Data

Meet the team

Achim Hahne, Project Manager Susanne Mecklenburg, Mission Manager Matthias Drusch, Mission Scientist Jordi Font, Co-Lead Investigator Yann Kerr, Co-Lead Investigator Manuel Martin-Neira, Instrument Principal Engineer Guillermo Buenadicha, Payload Operations Engineer Andrés Borges, EADS CASA Espacio Payload Project Manager Roger Jegou, Launch Campaign Manager Norrie Wright, Payload Data Ground Segment Manager

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Mapping soil moisture and ocean salinity

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HI-RES MPG (Size: 14 300 kb)

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SMOS will provide global information on surface soil moisture every three days within an accuracy of 4% at a spatial resolution of 50 km. This is comparable to being able to detect one teaspoonful of water mixed into a handful of soil.

Credits: ESA /AOES Medialab

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HI-RES MPG (Size: 4 780 kb)

SMOS observes sea-surface salinity down to 0.1 psu (practical salinity unit) for a 30-day average over an area of 200x200 km, which is comparable to detecting 0.1 g of salt in a litre of water.

Credits: ESA - AOES Medialab

Special features

SMOS: Helping Europe respond to climate change