The 5th SMOS Science Workshop

Background

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity Mission is ESA?s 2nd Earth Explorer Opportunity mission. It is an ESA led mission with contributions from the French Space Agency and the Spanish CDTI. The SMOS Project is currently in phase CD for a launch in February 2007.

The SMOS satellite will provide, for the first time, direct measurements of Sea Surface Salinity and surface soil moisture thanks to its payload: a L-band Polarised interferometric radiometer. More recently, two other missions, with synergistic goals and approaches, Hydros and Aquarius, have been selected by NASA.

Goals

Consequently, after four successful SMOS science workshops since 1999 (see http://www.cesbio.ups-tlse.fr/us/indexsmos.html) and a joint Aquarius ? SMOS ? Hydros workshop held earlier this year, it is necessary to start addressing key points so as to proceed through SMOS phase C/D and prepare phase E.

For this purpose, a science workshop was organised at:

Via Galileo Galilei

This workshop mainly focused on the calibration validation plan and scientific aspects of the ground segment, especially in view of the SMOS project and the synergisms with the US Missions. A description of the status of the different projects was given.

Keywords: ESA European Space Agency - Agence spatiale europeenne, observation de la terre, earth observation, satellite remote sensing, teledetection, geophysique, altimetrie, radar, chimique atmospherique, geophysics, altimetry, radar, atmospheric chemistry