Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) is an American environmental research satellite. Part of the first tier of missions recommended for NASA by the Earth Science Decadal Survey, it is scheduled for launch in 2014. It is one of the first Earth observation satellites being developed by NASA in response to the National Research Council’s Decadal Survey. It has been selected for launch in November 2014.
Read more about Soil Moisture Active Passive: Mission Overview, Measurement Concept, System Characteristics, Program Description, Science and Applications
Famous quotes containing the words soil, active and/or passive:
“If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus tainted,—no matter how much of it is offered to us,—we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves in primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economised by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“She has taken her passive pigeon poor,
She has buried him down and down.
He never shall sally to Sally
Nor soil any roofs of the town.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)