The Soil Moisture Active/Passive Mission (SMAP)

The National Research Council's decadal survey, Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond, was released in 2007 as the culmination of a two year study commissioned by NASA, NOAA, and USGS to provide consensus recommendations to guide the agencies" space-based Earth observation programs in the coming decade. The report committee sent out a Request for Information call to the community and received over one hundred mission concepts. The committee and its panels ultimately recommended seventeen priority missions for implementation in several time-blocks in the coming decade. The Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) mission was the highest priority mission of the Panel on Water Resources and the Global Hydrologic Cycle and the report recommended it for implementation in the first phase of missions (2010-2013). The mission will enable global soil moisture mapping with unprecedented resolution, sensitivity, area coverage, and revisit. SMAP draws heavily upon the heritage of the Hydrosphere State (Hydros) mission which was cancelled due to budget constraints in late 2005. NASA Headquarters held a two-day workshop on July 9-10, 2007 to evaluate the SMAP mission as defined in the report and to identify the ancillary measurements (if any) required to accomplish mission goals. A report on the workshop has been prepared. This presentation reports on the conclusions of the workshop in response to the charge by NASA Headquarters.