Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., la Agencia Espacial NASA, nos informa sobre los preparativos del próximo lanzamiento de: NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft. Una nave de la NASA diseñado para rastrear el agua de la Tierra en una de las más importantes, pero las formas menos reconocidos - la humedad del suelo - ahora está en la Base Aérea Vandenberg, California, para iniciar los preparativos finales para el lanzamiento en enero..................
SMAP proporcionará los de más alta resolución de las mediciones más precisas y globales de la humedad del suelo jamás obtenida desde el espacio y detectará si el suelo está congelado o descongelado. Los datos serán utilizados para mejorar la comprensión científica de los procesos que vinculan el agua, la energía y el carbono ciclos de la Tierra..............
Versión en inglés:
A NASA spacecraft designed to track Earth's water in one of its most
important, but least recognized forms -- soil moisture -- now is at Vandenberg
Air Force Base, California, to begin final preparations for launch in
January.
NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP)
spacecraft is delivered by truck to the Astrotech payload processing facility at
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Wednesday, Oct. 15,
2014.
Image Credit:
NASA
The
Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft arrived Wednesday at its launch
site on California's central coast after traveling from NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The spacecraft will undergo final
tests and then be integrated on top of a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket
in preparation for a planned Jan. 29 launch.
SMAP will provide the most accurate, highest-resolution global measurements
of soil moisture ever obtained from space and will detect whether the ground is
frozen or thawed. The data will be used to enhance scientists' understanding of
the processes that link Earth's water, energy and carbon cycles.
Soil moisture is critical for plant growth and supplies aquifers, which are
underground water supplies contained in layers of rock, sand or dirt. Through
evaporation, water in the soil cools the land surface and lower atmosphere while
seeding the upper atmosphere with moisture that forms clouds and rain.
High-resolution global maps of soil moisture produced from SMAP will allow
scientists to understand how regional water availability is changing and inform
water resource management decisions.
“Water is vital for all life on Earth, and the water present in soil is a
small but critically important part of Earth’s water cycle," said Kent Kellogg,
SMAP project manager at JPL. “The delivery of NASA’s SMAP spacecraft to
Vandenberg Air Force Base marks a final step to bring these unique and valuable
measurements to the global science community.”
SMAP data also will aid in predictions of plant growth and agricultural
productivity, improve weather and climate forecasts, and enhance our ability to
predict the extent and severity of droughts and where floods may occur. SMAP's
freeze/thaw data will also be used to detect changes in the length of the
growing season, which is an indicator of how much carbon plants take up from the
atmosphere each year.
Among the users of SMAP data will be hydrologists, weather forecasters,
climate scientists, and agricultural and water resource managers. Additional
users include fire hazard and flood disaster managers, disease control and
prevention managers, emergency planners and policy makers.
To make its high-resolution, high-accuracy measurements, SMAP will combine
data from two microwave instruments -- a synthetic aperture radar and a
radiometer -- in a way that uses the best features of each. The instruments can
peer through clouds and moderate vegetation cover day and night to measure water
in the top 2 inches (5 centimeters) of the soil.
SMAP will fly in a 426-mile (685-kilometer) altitude, near-polar,
sun-synchronous orbit that crosses the equator near 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. local
time. SMAP is designed to operate for at least three years, producing a global
map of soil moisture every two to three days.
SMAP is managed for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington by JPL
with participation by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
JPL is responsible for project management, system engineering, instrument
management, the radar instrument, mission operations and the ground data system.
Goddard is responsible for the radiometer instrument. Both centers collaborate
on the science data processing and delivery of science data products to the
Alaska Satellite Facility and the National Snow and Ice Data Center for public
distribution and archiving. NASA's Launch Services Program at NASA'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 SMAP,
visit:
SMAP is planned to be the final of five NASA Earth science missions launched
into space in a 12-month period, the most new NASA Earth-observing mission
launches in that timespan in more than a decade. 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. The agency
shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with
institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to
understanding and protecting our home planet.
For more information about NASA's Earth science activities, visit:
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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