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News  Finnish university and industry celebrate their contribution to SMOS
With the launch of ESA’s Earth Explorer SMOS satellite just a few days away, the Helsinki University of Technology has been celebrating and reflecting on the contribution they and Finnish industry have made to SMOS. Together, their efforts proved fundamental to the consolidation of the mission concept. Finland’s contributions to the SMOS mission were celebrated at a press event held on 21 October at the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK). Kimmo Kanto from the Finnish delegation opened the event and spoke about how monitoring Earth from space has become vital to understanding and mitigating the effects of global change.
Kanto was followed by ESA’s Manuel Martin-Neira, who is the Principle Engineer for the SMOS instrument and expressed ESA’s appreciation of Finland’s contributions to the mission. In particular, he recognised that the first image of the Milky Way, taken by the ‘HUT-2D’ airborne L-band aperture synthesis radiometer, was a key milestone in the development of SMOS.
L-band radiation. By applying state-of-the-art calibration techniques, the instrument was able to acquire clear images of the galaxy. Martin-Neira added that the campaign flights made by TKK’s Skyvan aircraft carrying the HUT-2D instrument provided the first end-to-end good quality demonstration of the SMOS mission concept. He also acknowledged Finnish industry in the development of SMOS by thanking Ylinen for the company’s excellent work in delivering the mission’s Noise Injection Radiometers (NIR) and the onboard Calibration System (CAS) in collaboration with TKK, Toikka Oy for the earlier design of NIR, and the procurement from Modulight of the laser diodes in MIRAS’s optical harness.
During the afternoon seminar, a total of nine detailed presentations were given about the work carried out for the MIRAS NIR and CAS subsystems, the optical harness and the calibration and validation activities by several scientific groups in Finland. Finnish contributions now focus on calibration and validation activities for SMOS, such as taking in situ measurements of soil moisture in forested areas and ocean salinity in cold seas that will be compared with data from SMOS once in orbit.
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