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SMOS completes early orbit phase

4 December 2009

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SMOS will make global observations of soil moisture over land and sea-surface salinity over the oceans to improve our understanding of the water cycle. Data from SMOS will be important for weather and climate modelling, water resource management, agriculture and also contribute to the forecasting of hazardous events such as floods.

Credits: ESA - AOES Medialab

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Mission Control at the French space agency CNES, in Toulouse, France, received confirmation that the MIRAS antennas had deployed on 3 November 2009.

Credits: CNES

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This image is the first data sent to Earth by the MIRAS instrument on ESA's SMOS satellite, launched on 2 November. It was acquired as part of the initial functional verification test after the instrument was switched on on 17 November.

The image depicts non-calibrated brightness temperature values colour coded from blue (low) to red (high). Although the image content cannot be interpreted at this time, it proves that the instrument is in good shape and the data reception and processing chain are working.

Credits: ESA

SMOS launch