SMOS science mission gets underway

One of the prettiest satellites currently in space, the ESA Soil Moisture and Salinity (SMOS) mission, is getting started on its scientific observations. SMOS launched on November 2, 2009, but I imagine that it took some time to get all those little antennas working in a cooperative fashion. Well, that part is done, so now we'll get two important *new* data insights into the world's water cycle, which as we know is related to climate, and there are some serious concerns about how that's going to change regionally as the world continues to warm up.

Early data return shown below for Australia, which definitely has some soil moisture issues: