Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity
(click to enlarge)
Part of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Living Planet Programme, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, due for launch in 2007, will provide invaluable information on hydrology and ocean circulation patters. This will benefit meteorologists, weather forecasters, and research into global climate change.
SciSys has been a member of the SMOS Payload Module team (lead by EADS CASA) since the start of Phase B. SciSys has been responsible for specifying and developing the on-board application software.
Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity
(click to enlarge)
The software controls the 2-D interferometric radiometer which consists of three arms, each 4.5 metres long.
The software carries out the following functions:
- Data handling functions for the instrument in accordance with ESA Telecommand/Telemetry (TC/TM) Packet Utilisation Standard (PUS)
- Configuring the instrument and controlling the instrument's modes
- Providing the instrument thermal control
The software is developed to run on the ERC32 processor and has been written in ANSI C.
