SMOS Long Term trend Analysis performed by Quality Control Operations under the IDEAS Contract
Martin Porqueras, Fernando1; Hatton, Emma2
1Telespazio VEGA UK SL, SPAIN; 2Telespazio VEGA UK Ltd, SPAIN

ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission has been already in orbit for 3 years. The SMOS’s payload MIRAS (Microwave Imaging Radiometer by Aperture Synthesis) is the first space borne 2-D imaging microwave radiometer at L-band. Since MIRAS is the first in its kind in orbit, an exhaustive monitoring of its behaviour in space and its measurements is periodically conducted by the mission.

This poster provides a summary of the long term trends of the key parameters of the instrument health and the SMOS measurements conducted by SMOS Quality Control (QC) Operations. That monitoring allows the assessment of the instrument stability which is one of the most important parameters of a radiometer. Operational QC of ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission is currently carried out under the Image Data quality Evaluation and Analysis Service (IDEAS).