NASA to launch a satelite to track soil moisture in an effort to better advize farmers.

NASA SMAP

From the article : " Scheduled for launch on Jan. 29, 2015, NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) instrument will measure the moisture lodged in Earth's soils with an unprecedented accuracy and resolution. The instrument's three main parts are a radar, a radiometer and the largest rotating mesh antenna ever deployed in space."


Can't go wrong by getting more data into the hands of the growers.

What do you think?

Craig Dobbelyu wrote:NASA SMAP

Can't go wrong by getting more data into the hands of the growers.

What do you think?

Is it just me, or is this one of those Oh My Gosh moments where NSA spying never ends?
Somehow I don't think the Gov't is going to share. I hope I'm wrong!

I'd love to see the difference in soil moisture between farmland with forested hill-tops and those without trees.
It'd be great to see a massive difference leading to a change in land use.

Fred Patrick wrote:

Craig Dobbelyu wrote:NASA SMAP

Can't go wrong by getting more data into the hands of the growers.

What do you think?

Is it just me, or is this one of those Oh My Gosh moments where NSA spying never ends?
Somehow I don't think the Gov't is going to share. I hope I'm wrong!

I suspect that if that were the case, they wouldn't have written a news article about it. I'm not saying that there aren't "spy" satellites but they probably aren't written about publicly.
I'd like to think that the data would be used in such a way as to ID places where things are remaining lush and then go to those places and find out why. Imagine a person knocking on your door one day saying "I'm from NASA and we noticed your property is thriving. Can you help us with something?". That would be pretty cool.

Dean Howard wrote:

Craig Dobbelyu wrote:NASA SMAP

Can't go wrong by getting more data into the hands of the growers.

What do you think?

Is it just me, or is this one of those Oh My Gosh moments where NSA spying never ends?
Somehow I don't think the Gov't is going to share. I hope I'm wrong!

Please don't confuse (or even equate) NASA with the NSA. NASA does an incredible service to the scientific community while the NSA just considers us all suspects.

Also, I don't see NASA hiding this information. The LandSat programs have been giving us free satellite images for decades. The LandSat 8 program has been especially helpful for monitoring large scale vegetation health with multispectral imagery. I'm incredibly excited for the SMAP program.