At around 04:50 local time (0150 GMT) this morning, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity Satellite (SMOS), part of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Living Planet Program, roared into the sky aboard a modified Russian Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) SS-19. The Rockot delivery system took off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a Russian spaceport located about 800 kilometers North of Moscow, and some 200 kilometers South of the city of Arkhangelsk. The flight went according to plan, and the satellite is now in the process of being inserted on its designated orbit.

“We had a very beautiful launch. This is not just a satellite; this is a very important event. This is the second of our Earth Explorers and with that we confirm that ESA is the space agency of the world making the best efforts for Earth science and a new understanding of climate change,” ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain told the BBC News. The first stage of the mission, the official says, is scheduled to last for about three years.

About 70 minutes after the Rockot delivery system blasted off from the Plesetsk launch facility, the controllers at the Hartebeesthoek ground station, near Johannesburg, in South Africa, confirmed that they had picked up telemetry coming in from SMOS. All the science instruments on the spacecraft are currently folded and will be unfurled tomorrow, in the most crucial step of the entire flight.

“We do it in two steps. The arms are attached by 12 nuts, four on each arm. First, the pyrotechnic sequence will cut nine nuts so that each arm is held by one nut. Then we will fire the final nuts to have a synchronous opening of the arms. It will take about three minutes,” French Space Agency (CNES) SMOS Project Manager Francois Bermudo says.

The main goal of SMOS' mission is to analyze the faint radio waves that are emitted through the top layer of the soil and sea water. According to hydrologists, the strength of these signals can be used as a clear indicator of how much water there is in the ground, information that could, in turn, be used to anticipate floods earlier than currently possible, and also to improve weather forecasts. In spite of the fact that it will do this roughly, SMOS will be the first satellite of this type to perform a global measurement of these readings, ESA officials say.

“Soil moisture levels actually form the basis for every hydrologist. Using them, along with other information, you can make decisions on such matters as flooding, drought, desertification and regional weather. Good data on soil moisture levels, however, is scarce. Up to now, you had to go out into the field with a shovel, in a manner of speaking, in order to map out soil moisture levels. That is all going to change with the SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) satellite,” TU Delft expert, Professor Nick van de Giesen explains.