When things go right! First images and data from SMAP

So I’m now the proud parent of one orbiting, deployed, spinning, fully functional spacecraft!  The SMAP satellite is done initiating all its systems and has taken its first global soil measurement maps:

Since the Earth environment where we built SMAP is very different than the space environment where we operate SMAP, we never before had seen real soil moisture data.  So imagine the whole team’s joy when we received the first beautiful soil moisture maps!

Thanks to SMAP and the hardworking team that built and tested it, we will have soil moisture data every three days to help predict floods and droughts and to improve our understanding of how water and carbon circulate. If you’d like to get your hands on some of the data, it’s all available to the public.  More information can be found here: http://smap.jpl.nasa.gov/data/