Water mission ready for lift-off

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A European satellite is set to provide major new insights into how water is cycled around the Earth.

The Smos spacecraft will make the first global maps of the amount of moisture held in soils and of the quantity of salts dissolved in the oceans.

The data will have wide uses but should improve weather forecasts and warnings of extreme events, such as floods.

Smos is scheduled to lift off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia at 0450 local time (0150 GMT) on Monday.

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite is part of an armada of European spacecraft being sent into orbit over the next few years to study the planet.

"Smos is a very challenging mission which has required a completely new type of instrument," said Dr Volker Liebig, the director of Earth observation at the European Space Agency (Esa)

The instrument is an interferometric radiometer called Miras. Some eight metres across, it has the look of helicopter rotor blades.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8331962.stm