SMOS shines at symposium   Even though SMOS was still undergoing calibration and validation, the animation clearly shows how the mission picked up the differences in soil moisture as heavy rains hit Tennessee and Kentucky, USA, in early May 2010. The images show soil moisture before the heavy rains on 29 April, where the dryer ground shows up as black and purple; on 2 May, when the rains occurred, where the wet and flooded soil is depicted in yellow and orange; and on 4 May where the soil is still wet, shown by blue and green.   SMOS is already delivering very encouraging results for ocean salinity. The data, combined from one month (May), show accuracy within 0.45 psu (practical salinity units) when compared with in situ float data, even though the data had not undergone through extensive processing in terms of averaging over space and time. The scientific requirement is 0.1 psu for 200 × 200 km over 10–30 days so there is still scope for improvement. However, even without averaging over space and time as necessary to fulfil this requirement these early results clearly show potential.   The image shows measurements of sea-surface salinity acquired in situ from floats. Data from the SMOS mission are compared with these to assess the accuracy of the spaceborne measurements.   An example of first results from the SMOS mission presented at ESA's Living Planet Symposium in Bergen, Norway: soil moisture retrievals for 20–23 June 2010.   Yann Kerr, at the Living Planet Symposium. Dr Kerr, from Cesbio, is the Lead Proposer for SMOS and Lead Investigator for soil moisture.   SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity), an ESA Earth Explorer satellite, was launched into orbit from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia on Monday 2 November 2009. Release date: 17 December 2010