EO Sign In Authentication (Open): This collection is openly accessible but requires users to log in with an EO Sign In account (a system used across ESA Earth Observation services) before any downloads can proceed.

Access Steps:

1. Create or log in to EO Sign In account.
2. Go to the Dissemination Service
3. Browse or search for the collection. 
4. Download product

SMOS products can also be discovered through ESA's Exploring Earth service, which allows users to browse and download products among the available datasets from ESA and Third Party Missions and instruments, using various criteria (spatial, temporal).

All SMOS products are freely accessible in accordance with ESA’s Earth observation data policy. An active EO Sign In account is required to download the products.

Access via FTP:

1. Open ftps://smos-diss.eo.esa.int/ via an FTP client.
2. Log in with an active EO Sign In account.
3. Find the product you want.
4. Download product.

The SMOS Near Real Time products include Level 1 (L1) geo-located brightness temperature and Level 2 (L2) geo-located soil moisture estimation.

The SMOS NRT L1 Light BUFR product 
Contains brightness temperature geo-located on a reduced Gaussian grid (T511/N256), only for "land" pixels but keeping the full angular resolution.

Main characteristics:

• pixels consolidated in a full orbit dump segment (i.e. around 100 minutes of sensing time),
• maximum size of about 30MB per orbit, 
• spatial resolution is in the range of 30-50 km,
• distributed in BUFR format.

The SMOS NRT L2 Soil Moisture Neural Network (NN) product 
Provides NRT soil moisture data based on the statistical coefficients estimated by a neural network.

Main characteristics:

• provided in the SMOS DGG grid and only at the satellite track,
• includes an estimation of the uncertainty of the estimated soil moisture product
• provides probability that a soil moisture value is contaminated by Radio Frequency Interference (RFI),
• distributed in NetCDF format.

The L2 data product is also distributed via the EUMETCast Europe Service (DVB), upon registration on the EUMETSAT Earth Observation Portal. The Ku-band DVB reception station must be situated within the service coverage in Europe.

SMOS NRT data is also regularly delivered to the UK Met-Office, then made available to operational agencies and research and development institutes via the WMO GTS Network.

Note: For an optimal exploitation of the SMOS NRT products please consult the read-me-first notes available in the Resources section below.