Abstract

SMOS, acronym for Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity, is the second selected opportunity mission on Living Planet Program: Earth Explorer Opportunity Missions of the European Space Agency (ESA) [1]. The MIRAS (Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis) is the single SMOS pay- load, which is compounded of 69 L-band receivers to form a Y shape interferometer with full on-board calibration capability. The Spanish company EADS-CASA is currently leading the development of a Small scale Airborne prototype of the MIRAS (SAM), in the frame of the MDPP-3 project (MIRAS Demonstrator Pilot Project, stage 3) sponsored by the ESA. Several European institutions, including the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, are participating in the development of the MDPP-3 instrument and test campaigns. The demonstrator consists of 12 receivers called LICEF (4 per arm), 1 reference radiometer (NIR) and includes the same internal calibration system scheme foreseen for MIRAS. The instrument has been designed to be flown in the Skyvan of the LST/HUT (Laboratory of Space Technology, Helsinki University of Technology), where several airborne campaigns over land and sea will be undertaken in order to asses the capability of SMOS calibration and retrieval algorithms to provide soil moisture and ocean salinity.

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