HR: 1330h
AN: H22D-0954    [PDF]
TI: The Hydrosphere State Mission (HYDROS) Soil Moisture and Freeze/Thaw Exploratory Mission
AU: * Entekhabi, D
EM: darae@mit.edu
AF: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 48-331, Cambridge, MA 02139 United States
AU: Njoku, E G
EM: eni.g.njoku@jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 United States
AU: Houser, P R
EM: Paul.Houser@nasa.gov
AF: Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AB: The Hydrosphere State Mission (HYDROS) is a pathfinder mission in the NASA's Earth System Pathfinder Program (ESSP). The objective of the mission is to provide exploratory measurements that constitute the first global scale measurement of Earth's soil moisture and land surface freeze/thaw conditions. The mission builds on the heritage of ground-based and airborne passive and active low-frequency microwave measurements that have demonstrated and validated the effectiveness of the measurements and associated algorithms for estimating the amount and phase (frozen or thawed) of surface soil moisture. The mission data will enable advances weather and climate prediction and in mapping processes that link the water, energy and carbon cycles. The proposed HYDROS instrument is a combined radar and radiometer system operating at 1.26 GHz (with VV, HH, and HV polarizations) and 1.41 GHz (with H, V, and U polarizations). The radar and the radiometer share the aperture of a 6-meter antenna pointing at 35$\deg$ with respect to nadir. The lightweight deployable mesh antenna is rotated at 14.6 rpm to provide a constant look-angel scan swath of 1000 km. The large swath provides a global coverage of the Earth in 2 to 3 days with a temporal sampling less than 2 days at latitude above 50N. The radar measurements allow the retrieval of soil moisture at high resolution (3 to 10 km). The radiometer measurements allow retrieval of soil moisture in diverse (non-forested) landscapes with a resolution of 40 km. The mission includes combined radar/radiometer data products that will use the synergy of the two sensors to deliver enhanced quality soil moisture estimates.
DE: 0315 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions
DE: 0394 Instruments and techniques
DE: 1863 Snow and ice (1827)
DE: 1866 Soil moisture
DE: 1894 Instruments and techniques
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting