American environmental research satellite Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which was launched with an aim to map global soil moisture, has started its science operations.

The United States space agency launched the mission in January this year. According to the agency, the SMAP mission will help scientists in understanding connections among the planet’s energy, water and carbon cycles. It will also help the agency in enhancing its ability to observe and forecast natural hazards such as droughts and floods. According to scientists, data from SMAP could also help them in additional practical applications.

The mission was launched into space in January this year. During its first three months in orbit, it was at first exposed to the space environment. After that, the observatory’s solar array and reflector boom assembly, which contains 20-foot reflector antenna, were deployed.

During the first three months, which is called as the mission’s commissioning phase, the scientists ensured that science data from SMAP is consistently flowing from its different instruments to the processing facilities at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.

While providing details about the mission, Kent Kellogg, SMAP project manager at JPL, said that SMAP has formally been transitioned to routine science operations. “SMAP's science team can now begin the important task of calibrating the observatory's science data products to ensure SMAP is meeting its requirements for measurement accuracy”, Kellogg added.

Dara Entekhabi, who is SMAP science team leader at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, said that the data that scientists will receive from SMAP will help them in understanding how soil moisture conditions have been changing over time in response to the climate.