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By Technology Review

April 2003

Moisture Measurements from Space

An international project under the direction of an MIT researcher and recently funded by NASA may improve the accuracy of weather forecasting and seasonal climate predictions. The Hydrosphere State mission, or Hydros, led by Dara Entekhabi, a professor in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, proposes putting a satellite into near-Earth orbit to measure soil moisture, one of the variables that determine weather.

The satellite will scan the earth using low-frequency microwaves to gauge soil moisture, which influences wind, precipitation, and land temperature. The gathered data will be sent to tracking stations and made available to meteorologists worldwide via the Internet.

Hydros is one of three projects selected last fall for a year of NASA funding. At least two of the three will be approved for flight later this year, pending additional funding from Congress.

With a $218 million projected price tag, the Hydros project is a collaboration of 40 scientists from MIT, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the U.S. Department of Defense, Canadian and Italian space agencies, and several universities. "I see this as a model of future operations," says Entekhabi. "These large collaboration projects will be more and more important in the future."