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NASA NTRS2011

Ice Lens Formation, Frost Heave, Thin Films, and the Importance of the Polar H2O Reservoir at High Obliquity

Several lines of evidence indicate that the volume of shallow ground ice in the martian high latitudes exceeds the pore volume of the host regolith. Boynton et al. found an optimal fit to the Mars Odyssey Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS) data at the Phoenix landing site by modeling a buried layer of 50-75% ice by mass (up to 90% ice by volume). Thermal and optical observations of recent impact craters in the northern hemisphere have revealed nearly pure ice. Ice deposits containing only 1-2% soil by volume were excavaged by Phoenix. One hypothesis for the origin of this excess ice is that it developed in situ by a mechanism analogous to the formation of terrestrial ice lenses and needle ice. Problematically, terrestrial soil-ice segregation is driven by freeze/thaw cycling and the movement of bulk water, neither of which are expected to have occurred in the geologically recent past on Mars. If however ice lens formation is possible at temperatures less than 273 K, there are possible implications for the habitability of Mars permafrost, since the same thin films of unfrozen water that lead to ice segregation are used by terrestrial psychrophiles to metaboluze and grow down to temperatures of at least 258 K.

Zent, A. P.↗

NASA NTRS2011

In Situ Validation of the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Satellite Mission

SMAP is a new NASA mission proposed for 2014 that would provide a number of soil moisture and freeze/thaw products. The soil moisture products span spatial resolutions from 3 to 40 km. In situ soil moisture observations will be one of the key elements of the validation program for SMAP. Data from the currently available set of soil moisture observing sites and networks need improvement if they are to be useful. Problems include a lack of standardization of instrumentation and installation and the disparity in spatial scale between the point-scale in situ data (a few centimeters) and the coarser satellite products. SMAP has initiated activities to resolve these issues for some of the existing resources. The other challenge to soil moisture validation is the need to expand the number of sites and their geographic distribution. SMAP is attempting to increase the number of sites and their value in validation through collaboration. The issues and solutions involving in situ validation being investigated will be described along with recent results from SMAP validation projects.

validation↗

NASA NTRS2012

Non-Toxic, Low-Freezing, Drop-In Replacement Heat Transfer Fluids

A non-toxic, non-flammable, low-freezing heat transfer fluid is being developed for drop-in replacement within current and future heat transfer loops currently using water or alcohol-based coolants. Numerous water-soluble compounds were down-selected and screened for toxicological, physical, chemical, compatibility, thermodynamic, and heat transfer properties. Two fluids were developed, one with a freezing point near 0 C, and one with a suppressed freezing point. Both fluids contain an additive package to improve material compatibility and microbial resistance. The optimized sub-zero solution had a freezing point of 30 C, and a freezing volume expansion of 10-percent of water. The toxicity of the solutions was experimentally determined as LD(50) greater than 5g/kg. The solutions were found to produce minimal corrosion with materials identified by NASA as potentially existing in secondary cooling loops. Thermal/hydrodynamic performance exceeded that of glycol-based fluids with comparable freezing points for temperatures Tf greater than 20 C. The additive package was demonstrated as a buffering agent to compensate for CO2 absorption, and to prevent microbial growth. The optimized solutions were determined to have physically/chemically stable shelf lives for freeze/thaw cycles and longterm test loop tests.

Cutbirth, J. Michael↗

NASA NTRS2011

The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Applications Activity

The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission is one of the first-tier satellite missions recommended by the U.S. National Research Council Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space. The SMAP mission 1 is under development by NASA and is scheduled for launch late in 2014. The SMAP measurements will allow global and high-resolution mapping of soil moisture and its freeze/thaw state at resolutions from 3-40 km. These measurements will have high value for a wide range of environmental applications that underpin many weather-related decisions including drought and flood guidance, agricultural productivity estimation, weather forecasting, climate predictions, and human health risk. In 2007, NASA was tasked by The National Academies to ensure that emerging scientific knowledge is actively applied to obtain societal benefits by broadening community participation and improving means for use of information. SMAP is one of the first missions to come out of this new charge, and its Applications Plan forms the basis for ensuring its commitment to its users. The purpose of this paper is to outline the methods and approaches of the SMAP applications activity, which is designed to increase and sustain the interaction between users and scientists involved in mission development.

Brown, Molly E.↗

NASA NTRS2011

RFI Mitigation and Detection for the SMAP Radar

The planned Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission will use both active radar and passive radiometer instruments at L-Band to measure and monitor both soilmoisture and freeze/thaw state globally. The frequency band allocated for the SMAP radar is shared with the Global Navigation Satellite Systems and ground-basedradiolocation services. Signals from those users present significant sources of anthropogenic radio frequency interference (RFI) which contaminate the radarmeasurements. To mitigate RFI, the radar is designed with tunable operating frequency, which allows the center frequency to be tuned to avoid RFI. The filtering scheme in the receiver is configured to get a high level of RFI suppression. To meet the high accuracy measurement requirements, RFI detection and correction will be required during ground data processing. Some candidate algorithms have been evaluated, and they have been tested against simulated SMAP data derived from the PALSAR data.

Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP)↗

NASA NTRS2012

Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) Forward Brightness Temperature Simulator

The SMAP is one of four first-tier missions recommended by the US National Research Council's Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space (Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond, Space Studies Board, National Academies Press, 2007) [1]. It is to measure the global soil moisture and freeze/thaw from space. One of the spaceborne instruments is an L-band radiometer with a shared single feedhorn and parabolic mesh reflector. While the radiometer measures the emission over a footprint of interest, unwanted emissions are also received by the antenna through the antenna sidelobes from the cosmic background and other error sources such as the Sun, the Moon and the galaxy. Their effects need to be considered accurately, and the analysis of the overall performance of the radiometer requires end-to-end performance simulation from Earth emission to antenna brightness temperature, such as the global simulation of L-band brightness temperature simulation over land and sea [2]. To assist with the SMAP radiometer level 1B algorithm development, the SMAP forward brightness temperature simulator is developed by adapting the Aquarius simulator [2] with necessary modifications. This poster presents the current status of the SMAP forward brightness simulator s development including incorporating the land microwave emission model and its input datasets, and a simplified atmospheric radiative transfer model. The latest simulation results are also presented to demonstrate the ability of supporting the SMAP L1B algorithm development.

Peng, Jinzheng↗

NASA NTRS2012

Remote Sensing and Modeling of Landslides: Detection, Monitoring and Risk Evaluation

Landslides are one of the most pervasive hazards in the world, resulting in more fatalities and economic damage than is generally recognized_ Occurring over an extensive range of lithologies, morphologies, hydrologies, and climates, mass movements can be triggered by intense or prolonged rainfall, seismicity, freeze/thaw processes, and antbropogertic activities, among other factors. The location, size, and timing of these processes are characteristically difficult to predict and assess because of their localized spatial scales, distribution, and complex interactions between rainfall infiltration, hydromechanical properties of the soil, and the underlying surface composition. However, the increased availability, accessibility, and resolution of remote sensing data offer a new opportunity to explore issues of landslide susceptibility, hazard, and risk over a variety of spatial scales. This special issue presents a series of papers that investigate the sources, behavior, and impacts of different mass movement types using a diverse set of data sources and evaluation methodologies.

Kirschbaum, Dalia↗

NASA NTRS2012

Estimating Sea Surface Salinity and Wind Using Combined Passive and Active L-Band Microwave Observations

Several L-band microwave radiometer and radar missions have been, or will be, operating in space for land and ocean observations. These include the NASA Aquarius mission and the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, both of which use combined passive/ active L-band instruments. Aquarius s passive/active L-band microwave sensor has been designed to map the salinity field at the surface of the ocean from space. SMAP s primary objectives are for soil moisture and freeze/thaw detection, but it will operate continuously over the ocean, and hence will have significant potential for ocean surface research. In this innovation, an algorithm has been developed to retrieve simultaneously ocean surface salinity and wind from combined passive/active L-band microwave observations of sea surfaces. The algorithm takes advantage of the differing response of brightness temperatures and radar backscatter to salinity, wind speed, and direction, thus minimizing the least squares error (LSE) measure, which signifies the difference between measurements and model functions of brightness temperatures and radar backscatter. The algorithm uses the conjugate gradient method to search for the local minima of the LSE. Three LSE measures with different measurement combinations have been tested. The first LSE measure uses passive microwave data only with retrieval errors reaching 1 to 2 psu (practical salinity units) for salinity, and 1 to 2 m/s for wind speed. The second LSE measure uses both passive and active microwave data for vertical and horizontal polarizations. The addition of active microwave data significantly improves the retrieval accuracy by about a factor of five. To mitigate the impact of Faraday rotation on satellite observations, the third LSE measure uses measurement combinations invariant under the Faraday rotation. For Aquarius, the expected RMS SSS (sea surface salinity) error will be less than about 0.2 psu for low winds, and increases to 0.3 psu at 25 m/s wind speed for warm waters (25 C). To achieve the required 0.2 psu accuracy, the impact of sea surface roughness (e.g. wind-generated ripples) on the observed brightness temperature has to be corrected to better than one tenth of a degree Kelvin. With this algorithm, the accuracy of retrieved wind speed will be high, varying from a few tenths to 0.6 m/s. The expected direction accuracy is also excellent (less than 10 ) for mid to high winds, but degrades for lower speeds (less than 7 m/s).

Yueh, Simon H.↗

NASA NTRS2014

Aquarius Radiometer and Scatterometer Weekly Polar-Gridded Products to Monitor Ice Sheets, Sea Ice, and Frozen Soil

Space-based microwave sensors have been available for several decades, and with time more frequencies have been offered. Observations made at frequencies between 7 and 183 GHz were often used for monitoring cryospheric properties (e.g. sea ice concentration, snow accumulation, snow melt extent and duration). Since 2009, satellite observations are available at the low frequency of 1.4 GHz. Such observations are collected by the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, and the Aquarius/SAC-D mission. Even though these missions have been designed for the monitoring of soil moisture and sea surface salinity, new applications are being developed to study the cryosphere. For instance, L-band observations can be used to monitor soil freeze/thaw (e.g. Rautiainen et al., 2012), and thin sea ice thickness (e.g. Kaleschke et al., 2010, Huntemann et al., 2013). Moreover, with the development of satellite missions comes the need for calibration and validation sites. These sites must have stable characteristics, such as the Antarctic Plateau (Drinkwater et al., 2004, Macelloni et al., 2013). Therefore, studying the cryosphere with 1.4 GHz observations is relevant for both science applications, and remote sensing applications.

Sea ice↗

NASA NTRS2013

SMAP Instrument Mechanical System Engineering

The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, scheduled for launch by the end of 2014, is being developed to measure the soil moisture and soil freeze/thaw state on a global scale over a three-year period. The accuracy, resolution, and global coverage of SMAP measurements are invaluable across many science and applications disciplines including hydrology, climate, carbon cycle, and the meteorological, environment, and ecology applications communities. The SMAP observatory is composed of a despun bus and a spinning instrument platform that includes both a deployable 6 meter aperture low structural frequency Astromesh reflector and a spin control system. The instrument section has engendered challenging mechanical system issues associated with the antenna deployment, flexible antenna pointing in the context of a multitude of disturbances, spun section mass properties, spin control system development, and overall integration with the flight system on both mechanical and control system levels. Moreover, the multitude of organizations involved, including two major vendors providing the spin subsystem and reflector boom assembly plus the flight system mechanical and guidance, navigation, and control teams, has led to several unique system engineering challenges. Capturing the key physics associated with the function of the flight system has been challenging due to the many different domains that are applicable. Key interfaces and operational concepts have led to complex negotiations because of the large number of organizations that integrate with the instrument mechanical system. Additionally, the verification and validation concerns associated with the mechanical system have had required far-reaching involvement from both the flight system and other subsystems. The SMAP instrument mechanical systems engineering issues and their solutions are described in this paper.

mechanical systems.↗

NASA NTRS2012

Development of the Large Aperture Reflector/Boom Assembly for the SMAP Spacecraft

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) mission is to measure and monitor global soil moisture dynamics and freeze/thaw states. The rotating Reflector and Boom Assembly (RBA) on SMAP presents significant design and development challenges. The payload configuration utilizes a common Radiometer and Radar feedhorn and a 6-meter deployable mesh reflector all spinning at 14.6 rpm. The evolution of the RBA system solution, development of the mass properties management approach and RBA dynamics are discussed.

Earth observation mission↗

NASA NTRS2012

Monte Carlo Analysis of the Commissioning Phase Maneuvers of the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Mission

The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission will perform soil moisture content and freeze/thaw state observations from a low-Earth orbit. The observatory is scheduled to launch in October 2014 and will perform observations from a near-polar, frozen, and sun-synchronous Science Orbit for a 3-year data collection mission. At launch, the observatory is delivered to an Injection Orbit that is biased below the Science Orbit; the spacecraft will maneuver to the Science Orbit during the mission Commissioning Phase. The delta V needed to maneuver from the Injection Orbit to the Science Orbit is computed statistically via a Monte Carlo simulation; the 99th percentile delta V (delta V99) is carried as a line item in the mission delta V budget. This paper details the simulation and analysis performed to compute this figure and the delta V99 computed per current mission parameters.

Monte Carlo simulations↗

NASA NTRS2012

SMAP Verification and Validation Project - Final Report

In 2007, the National Research Council (NRC) released the Decadal Survey of Earth science. In the future decade, the survey identified 15 new space missions of significant scientific and application value for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to undertake. One of these missions was the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission that NASA assigned to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in 2008. The goal of SMAP1 is to provide global, high resolution mapping of soil moisture and its freeze/thaw states. The SMAP project recently passed its Critical Design Review and is proceeding with its fabrication and testing phase.Verification and Validation (V&V) is widely recognized as a critical component in system engineering and is vital to the success of any space mission. V&V is a process that is used to check that a system meets its design requirements and specifications in order to fulfill its intended purpose. Verification often refers to the question "Have we built the system right?" whereas Validation asks "Have we built the right system?" Currently the SMAP V&V team is verifying design requirements through inspection, demonstration, analysis, or testing. An example of the SMAP V&V process is the verification of the antenna pointing accuracy with mathematical models since it is not possible to provide the appropriate micro-gravity environment for testing the antenna on Earth before launch.

Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP)↗

NASA NTRS2011

The Planned Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Mission L-Band Radar/Radiometer Instrument

The Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) mission is a NASA mission identified by the NRC 'decadal survey' to measure both soil moisture and freeze/thaw state from space. The mission will use both active radar and passive radiometer instruments at L-Band. In order to achieve a wide swath at sufficiently high resolution for both active and passive channels, an instrument architecture that uses a large rotating reflector is employed. The instrument system has completed the preliminary design review (PDR) stage, and detailed instrument design has begun. In addition to providing an overview of the instrument design, two recent design modifications are discussed: 1) The addition of active thermal control to the instrument spun side to provide a more stable, settable thermal environment for the radiometer electronics, and 2) A 'sequential transmit' strategy for the two radar polarization channels which allows a single high-power amplifier to be used.

radiometer↗

NASA NTRS2009

RFI Study for the SMAP Radar

The Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) mission has the scientific objective of measuring both soil moisture and freeze/thaw state from space. The mission will make both active radar and passive radiometer measurements at L-Band in order to retrieve soil moisture. Some studies, how-ever, indicated that these measurements are susceptible to radio frequency interference (RFI) in several geographic locations. As SMAP is a global mission and its mission life is 3 years, it is crucial for SMAP to understand the RFI over the whole globe and its temporal behavior. There will be impacts to the instrument system design and ground data processing in order to mitigate RFI. In this paper, strategies and procedures for performing this RFI study will be presented, and some results utilizing the RFI observed in the ALOS PALSAR data are described. The nature of the ob-served RFI is characterized and suggests some bands are relative free of RFI. The SMAP radar system will use a 1 MHz bandwidth, which can be placed within these suggested "clear" frequencies. The ALOS PALSAR data covers 28 MHz within the 80 MHz allocated for active L-Band remote sensing. In addition, an initial analysis with UAVSAR data, which uses the entire 80 MHz allocation, indicates the relative severity of RFI over the whole band. An algorithm to remove RFI is suggested and its performance is shown for some data from ALOS PALSAR and UAVSAR.

ALOS PALSAR↗

NASA NTRS2009

The Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) Mission Radar: A Novel Conically Scanning SAR

The Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) mission is a NASA mission identified by the NRC "decadal survey" to measure both soil moisture and freeze/thaw state from space. The mission will use both active radar and passive radiometer instruments at L-Band. In order to achieve a wide swath at sufficiently high resolution for both active and passive chan-nels, an instrument architecture that uses a large rotating reflector is employed. The active radar will further utilize SAR processing in order to obtain the sub-footprint resolution necessary for the geophysical retrievals. The SMAP radar has a unique geometry where the antenna footprint is continuously rotated about nadir in a conical fashion, as opposed to the more common side-looking SAR design. In additional to the unconventional scan geometry, the SMAP radar must address the effects of Faraday rotation and radio frequency interference (RFI), both consequences of the L-Band frequency of operation.

L-band↗

NASA NTRS2010

Design and Testing of an Active Heat Rejection Radiator with Digital Turn-Down Capability

NASA's proposed lunar lander, Altair, will be exposed to vastly different external environment temperatures. The challenges to the active thermal control system (ATCS) are compounded by unfavorable transients in the internal waste heat dissipation profile: the lowest heat load occurs in the coldest environment while peak loads coincide with the warmest environment. The current baseline for this fluid is a 50/50 inhibited propylene glycol/water mixture with a freeze temperature around -35 C. While the overall size of the radiator's heat rejection area is dictated by the worst case hot scenario, a turn-down feature is necessary to tolerate the worst case cold scenario. A radiator with digital turn-down capability is being designed as a robust means to maintain cabin environment and equipment temperatures while minimizing mass and power consumption. It utilizes active valving to isolate and render ineffective any number of parallel flow tubes which span across the ATCS radiator. Several options were assessed in a trade-study to accommodate flow tube isolation and how to deal with the stagnant fluid that would otherwise remain in the tube. Bread-board environmental tests were conducted for options to drain the fluid from a turned-down leg as well an option to allow a leg to freeze/thaw. Each drain option involved a positive displacement gear pump with different methods of providing a pressure head to feed it. Test results showed that a start-up heater used to generate vapor at the tube inlet held the most promise for tube evacuation. Based on these test results and conclusions drawn from the trade-study, a full-scale radiator design is being worked for the Altair mission profile.

Sunada, Eric↗

NASA NTRS2013

NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Observatory

The SMAP mission will produce high-resolution and accurate global maps of soil moisture and its freeze/thaw state using data from a non-imaging synthetic aperture radar and a radiometer, both operating at L-band.

Kellogg, Kent↗