NASA Launches Satellite To Observe Soil Moisture

An anonymous reader sends word that NASA has launched an Earth-observing satellite, which will measure the amount of moisture in soil. "In one of the space agency's bolder projects, a newly launched NASA satellite will monitor western drought and study the moisture, frozen and liquid in Earth's soil. It's true that a satellite can't possibly fix the devastating drought that has been plaguing the American West for the last years. It is also true that it can't possibly change the fact that California has just gone through the driest month in recorded history. But what NASA plans to do is to provide the possibility of understanding the patterns of this extreme weather and, perhaps, foresee how much worse it could actually become. Called the SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive Satellite), this new, unmanned project was successfully launched on Saturday atop the United Launch Alliance Delta II Rocket. The launch took place at the California Vandenberg Air Force base at exactly 9:22 AM EST. With the successful launch, NASA just kick started a three year, $916 million mission focused on measuring and forecasting droughts, floods and other possible natural disasters that might come our way in the future."

Comments

Kick started?

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA HAD A KICK STARTER? I would have contributed!
Oh, you mean like an old dirt bike then? Carry on.

Why bother?

[amightywind]

Why bother trying to understand climate change? The leftists should do what they really want, which is raise taxes.

Re: Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh...

Hobgoblins did it

[Tokolosh]

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H. L. Mencken

I think it is great that we can expand our understanding of how nature works, but sadly, this will just be another tool for scaring us.

Re: Hobgoblins did it

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not alarmed by intense droughts and urge nasa not to gain better understanding of what is going on.

To boldly go where no . . .

[Latent Heat]

. . . partially-PC-but-sexist-by-recent-standards television series producer has gone before!

Bolder project? It may be a necessary project, it may be a long overdue project, but what is bold about orbiting robotic spacecraft with imaging gear? That it is somehow bold to offend climate-change deniers? That NASA is risking everything in that the Repubs in Congress may zero out their budget over this?

Driest month in recorded history? Driest since Pliny-the-Elder? Since Josephus?

Or since white dudes came to LA? What about Mayan-Aztec-Toltec inscriptions? Oral tradition?

Re:To boldly go where no . . .

[Gavagai80]

Show me the oral traditional of annual rainfall totals. Or for that matter, show me when Mayans Aztecs or Toltecs were in LA.

Re:To boldly go where no . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

This was my first thought. Bold? Bolder than James Webb? Bolder than Europa? Bolder than asteroid retrieval? Bolder than gearing up for sample return from Mars? This is another in a string of Earth orbiters...I'm not debating the usefulness or if it is necessary, but come on...

Re:To boldly go where no . . .

[zippthorne]

Perhaps recorded history only starts now.. you know, with the satellite...

OK?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the Koch bros OK with this?

A different countdown

[hyades1]

Cue the Global Warming Denier trolls who infest this place in three...two...one...

Re:A different countdown

[volmtech]

What caused the flash freeze that trapped all that methane in the then ice free, marshy Arctic in the first place? And what caused the partial thaw pushing the mile high ice sheet off the northern continents leaving barely frozen tundra?

Launch time in summary is wrong

[Dmotv8]

The launch occurred at 6:22AM PST or 3:22AM EST. http://www.ulalaunch.com/ula-s...

Re:Launch time in summary is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but 6:22AM PST is 9:22AM EST.

Re:Launch time in summary is wrong

[Rei]

I wonder how the Mystery Goo is going to behave in that orbit.

Used in conjunction with other sats...

[estitabarnak]

I'm excited to see data from this and the atmospheric CO2 satellite which was launched (again) not long ago overlayed. Seeing how CO2 and soil moisture correspond is important for understanding limitations on microbial communities which make up a large part of the global carbon budget. It will be particularly interesting to measure changes to how these correspond over time -- it'd be a great way to get solid data for future modelling and for quantifying changes currently happening.

Also particularly interesting is the ability to monitor changes as a result of permafrost thaw globally. There's currently some discussion whether and where permafrost thaw will be a net C sink or source. Throw in some data from a Leaf Area Index satellite (which is/are also in orbit currently) and you've got some pretty compelling global/landscape data.

Re:Used in conjunction with other sats...

[janenichols]

Great experiment by NASA! This is the agency's first Earth satellite, the SMAP launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket.The spacecraft established communications with ground controllers following a series of activation procedures, and deployed its solar array. SMAP will play a key role in understanding key components of the Earth system that brings together water, energy and carbon cycles.

can't possibly fix the devastating drought

[fustakrakich]

No, but desalination can. Get to work dammit! The 'drought' is a fraud. It needn't happen ever again on this planet.

Active Passive Satellite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Passive Aggressive Satellite

Parched by the Sun scorched by the Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

Death Valley was a lush tropical paradise when it was discovered, right?

Re:Parched by the Sun scorched by the Moon

[sillybilly]

No, but with the right technology (like greenhouses, solar power, air conditioners, and atmospheric moisture extractors) it could be turned into one. Unfortunately that, like the loss of snow caps on mountaintops like Kilimanjaro, would reduce solar reflectivity and increase global warming, because jungle green reflects less visible light penetrating the atmosphere into outer space and coverts it to infrared that bounces back to the planet from the atmosphere, compared to bright desert yellow sand. One must wait until there is tangible evidence of the mofos on top running the show putting up umbrella like solar panels (that beam the power via microwave down to Earth or maybe to the ISS or the Moon) at the Lagrange point in sufficient amount (say 1% of total Earth surface area) to compensate for loss of reflectivity and cool the planet the fuck back down until the snow on top of Kilimanjaro reappears in same quantity as it was in 1950. Until then areas like Death Valley or Death Saudi Arabia or Death Sahara Desert must wait. And we're talking a lot of real estate: http://whiteafrican.com/wp-con...
Then go look up the land area of the Sahara Desert to realize how much opportunity to expand jungles is wasted presently as wind blown desert sand dunes with death and nothing in them. From that picture it looks like the Sahara Desert is bigger than the entire continental US not including Alaska, and Alaska might be by far the biggest state by land area, but it's pretty empty from people (except shotgun wielding hot as fuck air heads like Sarah Palin that everyone, including all the women have a crush on and want to see naked) because it does not get enough sunlight, or enough temperate temperature days to allow for farming to proliferate, unlike the jungles of India, Congo, Brazil, or Vietnam that are bursting with life and genetic variability. Alaska does get forests and safe habitat for rare or near extinct animals like grizzlies, polar bears and wolves. For comparison in land areas, Russia tops the list, for instance look at this picture: http://alphadesigner.com/wp-co...

Btw I came across another good picture worth soaking up. We all know about China being the most populous, and people in Japan being perverts who fuck like rabbits, but besides them two check out India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, VietNam, Mexico and compare to US, Russia, Canada, Australia and Saudi Arabia, or even Yemen to Saudi Arabia, or even Ukraine to Russia, to find out where the most coitus is going down on the planet and where people are most strictly religious in the non-kama-sutra way and keep a leash on their dick. http://i.imgur.com/HhqlkMK.png
Based on this picture a Pearl Harbor attack by a tiny country like Japan on a humongous country like the US is not really that insane, and should a war happen between Japan and Australia alone, or even Vietnam and Australia, and it's obvious who the immediate winner would be, right? When you could human soldiers which are cheaper, more expandable and more robust than robots.

It would be nice to see a similar breakdown for the US along racial lines. For instance in the 1990's there were 17% African Americans in the US, supposedly, in the days of $25/hr union wages with a high school diploma. These days all I see is white women with black kids and everyone on welfare and white guys not having children over not having a job, or not having a job that pays well, and I'm starting to think that the racial makeup is more like 30% Black, 20%Hispanic and 10% Asian, and out of these Hispanics are the fastest breeding. As long as there is guaranteed welfare checks that leave no child left behind and starving, there is no reason not to pop as many as you possibly can, right? How you gonna tell somebody not to hit that booty, not to fuck, and not to have children,

Re:Parched by the Sun scorched by the Moon

[sillybilly]

These days I am forced to do whatever it takes not to show up at a hospital, even when they infect the fuck out of me and xray the fuck out of me, because I oppose forced insurance purchases, such as Obamacare is trying to introduce, which would devastate the financial life of any responsible family, and pretty much amounts to nothing but mass extermination of the responsible middle class by draining their financial resources they could use to have another child and live on in the next generation, it takes the breast milk money out of middle class tits and starves those babies and gives them to the upper and lower classes. They are trying to make an example case out of me for Obamacare and have me show up at a hospital sick and uninsured, and my answer to that is that I'm willing to make an example case out of Obamacare out of me and die over this shit so other people, who are responsible, and I care about, can live.

Re:Parched by the Sun scorched by the Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

It's me again. All Obamacare does is drains and devastates middle class bank accounts through 900/mo longterm gambling policy premium payments (of course, like drugs, the first time they are near free, but long term expect 900/mo) and either forces middle class responsible people to become welfare recipients, or just takes that money and gives it to the welfare fuckers breeding out of control, and to the 80 year old insurance company CEO's getting their blow jobs at country clubs from near underage 19 year old teenage single mothers, the upper and lower class fucking on other people's money, while exterminating the everyday middle class hard working people busting ass working who are the backbone of the economy and of democracy.

Dupe ?

[Zoxed]

Sounds like ESAs SMOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... ?

Re:Dupe ?

[idontgno]

News Flash: ESA and NASA fly similar Earth-observation missions ALL THE TIME.

Odds are good, if NASA is doing it, so is ESA. And they collaborate on mission plans, and share data.

Earth observation is one area of very good international cooperation. Since, after all, it's just one Earth.