{"id":16865,"date":"2014-11-05T18:55:20","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T10:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/soil-moisture-mapper-fueled-for-january-launch\/"},"modified":"2014-11-05T18:55:20","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T10:55:20","slug":"soil-moisture-mapper-fueled-for-january-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/soil-moisture-mapper-fueled-for-january-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Soil moisture mapper fueled for January launch"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_861\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-861\" style=\"width: 620px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-861\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/SMAP-beauty-shot-2011-New-Array-Landscape-smaller1.jpg\" alt=\"Artist's concept of the SMAP spacecraft in orbit. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\" width=\"620\" height=\"467\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/SMAP-beauty-shot-2011-New-Array-Landscape-smaller1.jpg 1500w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/SMAP-beauty-shot-2011-New-Array-Landscape-smaller1-300x226.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/SMAP-beauty-shot-2011-New-Array-Landscape-smaller1-768x579.jpg 768w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/SMAP-beauty-shot-2011-New-Array-Landscape-smaller1-1024x771.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/SMAP-beauty-shot-2011-New-Array-Landscape-smaller1-326x245.jpg 326w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/SMAP-beauty-shot-2011-New-Array-Landscape-smaller1-80x60.jpg 80w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-861\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist\u2019s concept of the SMAP spacecraft in orbit. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>NASA\u2019s innovative soil moisture mapper, a new environmental satellite launching in January, has been fueled up for blastoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.<\/p>\n<p>To be carried aloft by a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket, the liftoff is slated for Jan. 29 at 6:20 a.m. local time (9:20 a.m. EST; 1420 GMT).<\/p>\n<p>The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft arrived at Vandenberg in mid-October from NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where it was built.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have very little left to do at this point. The observatory is pretty much configured for flight,\u201d said Kent Kellogg, SMAP project manager at JPL.<\/p>\n<p>The spacecraft has been loaded with 180 pounds of hydrazine maneuvering fuel and its software has been installed.<\/p>\n<p>Fitted with an active synthetic aperture radar and passive radiometer, the data from SMAP will be used varied applications as weather forecasting to disease control.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur objective is to make global maps of soil moisture and also the freeze\/thaw state every 2-3 days,\u201d Kellogg said.<\/p>\n<p>The 2,100-pound SMAP is equipped with a 19.7-foot (6-meter) deployable mesh reflector antenna atop a boom structure that spins at 14.6 RPM and measures the planet in swaths of 620 miles (1,000 km).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a large deployable structure. We\u2019ve done a lot of testing on it and we feel pretty confident,\u201d Kellogg said.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"678\" height=\"509\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RLw3veKBqo0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Astro Aerospace, part of Northrop Grumman, builder of deployable structures and mechanisms for spaceflight produced the antenna reflector system for SMAP.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019ve built larger forms of these antennas,\u201d Kellogg said. \u201cThey are very proud to tell you that they\u2019ve never had a deployment failure in space. It\u2019s a pretty elegant design and we have a lot of confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The spacecraft, orbiting at altitude of 426 miles (685 km), will see through moderate vegetation, like a mature Iowa corn field, operating in daylight or darkness, to provide high-resolution maps of moisture in the soil and the state of the ground \u2014 either frozen or thawed \u2014 to give weather forecasters a better base for computer forecasting models.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more, the mission will help flood or drought monitoring, food productivity insights and climate science.<\/p>\n<p>A two-stage Delta 2 rocket, with three strap-on solid motors, will haul the observatory into a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit.<\/p>\n<p>Officials had hoped that SMAP might launch sooner than the end of January.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut that\u2019s looking quite unlikely at this point,\u201d Kellogg said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo our plan to go into a holding operation with a smaller crew doing weekly checks on the observatory, and then we mate to the launch vehicle early in January.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Artist\u2019s concept of the SMAP spacecraft in orbit. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech NASA\u2019s innovative soil moisture mapper, a new environmental satellite launching in January, has been fueled up for blastoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. To be carried aloft by a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket, the liftoff is slated for Jan. 29 at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1807,159,3967,3081],"class_list":["post-16865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-delta-2","tag-earth-observation","tag-smap","tag-vandenberg-air-force-base"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16865"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}