Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., la Agencia Espacial NASA, nos informa que uno de sus satélites : The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) misión;(SMAP - Humedad del Suelo Activo Pasivo). La próxima misión de la NASA para estudiar la Tierra es un asignador de humedad del suelo conocido como SMAP (Humedad del Suelo Activo Pasivo). Los datos de SMAP se utilizarán para mejorar la comprensión de los procesos que vinculan los ciclos del agua, energía y carbono, y para ampliar las capacidades de los modelos meteorológicos y de predicción del clima, incluyendo la mejora de las capacidades de predicción de inundaciones y control de la sequía...... Un nuevo satélite de la NASA que mirar en la capa superior de los suelos de la Tierra para medir las aguas ocultas que influyen en nuestro tiempo y el clima está en los preparativos finales para un amanecer de lanzamiento 29 de enero de California...."
NASA, nos dice ...:
La humedad del suelo Activo Pasivo (SMAP) misión tomará el pulso de una medida clave de nuestro planeta el agua: cómo el agua dulce ciclos sobre la superficie terrestre de la Tierra en forma de humedad del suelo. La misión producirá el, la más alta resolución más precisa mapas globales jamás obtenidas desde el espacio de la humedad presente en la parte superior 2 pulgadas (5 centímetros) de los suelos de la Tierra. También será detectar y cartografiar si el suelo está congelado o descongelado. Estos datos serán utilizados para mejorar la comprensión científica de los procesos que vinculan agua, energía y carbono ciclos de la Tierra............."
Youtube Override:
NASA's next mission to study Earth is a soil
moisture mapper know as SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive). Data from SMAP will
be used to enhance understanding of processes that link the water, energy and
carbon cycles, and to extend the capabilities of weather and climate prediction
models including improved flood prediction and drought monitoring capabilities.
Image Credit:
NASA
A new NASA satellite that will peer into the topmost layer of Earth's soils
to measure the hidden waters that influence our weather and climate is in final
preparations for a Jan. 29 dawn launch from California.
The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission will take the pulse of a key
measure of our water planet: how freshwater cycles over Earth's land surfaces in
the form of soil moisture. The mission will produce the most accurate,
highest-resolution global maps ever obtained from space of the moisture present
in the top 2 inches (5 centimeters) of Earth's soils. It also will detect and
map whether the ground is frozen or thawed. This data will be used to enhance
scientists' understanding of the processes that link Earth's water, energy and
carbon cycles.
"With data from SMAP, scientists and decision makers around the world will be
better equipped to understand how Earth works as a system and how soil moisture
impacts a myriad of human activities, from floods and drought to weather and
crop yield forecasts," said Christine Bonniksen, SMAP program executive with the
Science Mission Directorate's Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in
Washington. "SMAP's global soil moisture measurements will provide a new
capability to improve our understanding of Earth's climate."
Globally, the volume of soil moisture varies between three and five percent
in desert and arid regions, to between 40 and 50 percent in saturated soils. In
general, the amount depends on such factors as precipitation patterns,
topography, vegetation cover and soil composition. There are not enough sensors
in the ground to map the variability in global soil moisture at the level of
detail needed by scientists and decision makers. From space, SMAP will produce
global maps with 6-mile (10-kilometer) resolution every two to three days.
Researchers want to measure soil moisture and its freeze/thaw state better
for numerous reasons. Plants and crops draw water from the soil through their
roots to grow. If soil moisture is inadequate, plants fail to grow, which over
time can lead to reduced crop yields. Also, energy from the sun evaporates
moisture in the soil, thereby cooling surface temperatures and also increasing
moisture in the atmosphere, allowing clouds and precipitation to form more
readily. In this way, soil moisture has a significant effect on both short-term
regional weather and longer-term global climate.
In summer, plants in Earth's northern boreal regions -- the forests found in
Earth's high northern latitudes -- take in carbon dioxide from the air and use
it to grow, but lay dormant during the winter freeze period. All other factors
being equal, the longer the growing season, the more carbon plants take in and
the more effective forests are in removing carbon dioxide from the air. Since
the start of the growing season is marked by the thawing and refreezing of water
in soils, mapping the freeze/thaw state of soils with SMAP will help scientists
more accurately account for how much carbon plants are removing from the
atmosphere each year. This information will lead to better estimates of the
carbon budget in the atmosphere and, hence, better assessments of future global
warming.
SMAP data will enhance our confidence in projections of how Earth's water
cycle will respond to climate change.
"Assessing future changes in regional water availability is perhaps one of
the greatest environmental challenges facing the world today," said Dara
Entekhabi, SMAP science team leader at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in Cambridge. "Today's computer models disagree on how the water cycle --
precipitation, clouds, evaporation, runoff, soil water availability -- will
increase or decrease over time and in different regions as our world warms.
SMAP's higher-resolution soil moisture data will improve the models used to make
daily weather and longer-term climate predictions."
SMAP also will advance our ability to monitor droughts, predict floods and
mitigate the related impacts of these extreme events. It will allow the
monitoring of regional deficits in soil moisture and provide critical inputs
into drought monitoring and early warning systems used by resource managers. The
mission's high-resolution observations of soil moisture will improve flood
warnings by providing information on ground saturation conditions before
rainstorms.
SMAP's two advanced instruments work together to produce soil moisture maps.
Its active radar works much like a flash camera, but instead of transmitting
visible light, it transmits microwave pulses that pass through clouds and
moderate vegetation cover to the ground and measures how much of that signal is
reflected back. Its passive radiometer operates like a natural-light camera,
capturing emitted microwave radiation without transmitting a pulse. Unlike
traditional cameras, however, SMAP's images are in the microwave range of the
electromagnetic spectrum, which is invisible to the naked eye. Microwave
radiation is sensitive to how much moisture is contained in the soil.
The two instruments share a large, lightweight reflector antenna that will be
unfurled in orbit like a blooming flower and then spin at about 14 revolutions
per minute. The antenna will allow the instruments to collect data across a
621-mile (1,000-kilometer) swath, enabling global coverage every two to three
days.
SMAP's radiometer measurements extend and expand on soil moisture
measurements currently made by the European Space Agency's Soil Moisture Ocean
Salinity (SMOS) mission, launched in 2009. With the addition of a radar
instrument, SMAP's soil moisture measurements will be able to distinguish finer
features on the ground.
SMAP will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a United Launch Alliance
Delta II rocket and maneuver into a 426-mile (685-kilometer) altitude,
near-polar orbit that repeats exactly every eight days. The mission is designed
to operate at least three years.
SMAP is managed for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington by the
agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, with
instrument hardware and science contributions made by NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. JPL is responsible for project management,
system engineering, radar instrumentation, mission operations and the ground
data system. Goddard is responsible for the radiometer instrument. Both centers
collaborate on science data processing and delivery to the Alaska Satellite
Facility, in Fairbanks, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center, at the
University of Colorado in Boulder, for public distribution and archiving. NASA's
Launch Services Program at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is
responsible for launch management. JPL is managed for NASA by the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
For more information about the Soil Moisture Active Passive mission,
visit:
and
SMAP will be the fifth NASA Earth science mission to launch within a 12-month
period. NASA monitors Earth’s vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet
of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns.
NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth’s interconnected natural
systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see
how our planet is changing.
For more information about NASA's Earth science activities, visit:
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
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