Satellite launched in water monitoring mission

The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully launched its satellite designed to carry out water monitoring on a global scale.

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (Smos) satellite is the first of its kind to be programmed to monitor soil moisture and map sea surface salinity around the world.

Smos is fitted with a microwave imaging radiometer using aperture synthesis which can be utilised to measure the temperature of the reflection of the earth's surface in the microwave frequency range.

It is the conductive characteristics of the actual temperature recorded which will provide the information relating to the soil moisture for land surface and water salinity for sea surface.

Volker Liebig, the director of earth observation programmes at the ESA, said: "The data collected by Smos will complement measures already performed on the ground and at sea to monitor water exchanges on a global scale."

Mr Liebig added that the satellite would provide important information relating to heat exchanges within the oceans, which climatologists could then use to help predict the long-term effects of climate change.

This is the second satellite to be launched as part of the ESA's the Earth Explorer programme. The first, which went into orbit on March 17th this year, was designed to measure the earth's gravity field.

The ESA intends to send four further satellites into space by 2013. The next one is due to launch in February 2010 with the purpose of acquiring data about the thickness of floating sea-ice and continental ice sheets.

Posted by Claire Manning