NASA will hold a media briefing at 2 p.m. EST Thursday, Jan. 8, in the James E. Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters in Washington to discuss the upcoming Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission.

The briefings will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's website.

SMAP, set for a Jan. 29 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, will provide the most accurate, highest-resolution global measurements of soil moisture ever obtained from space and will detect whether the ground is frozen or thawed. The data will be used to enhance scientists' understanding of the processes that link Earth's water, energy and carbon cycles.

The briefing participants are:

Christine Bonniksen, SMAP program executive with the Science Mission Directorates Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington

Kent Kellogg, SMAP project manager with NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California

Dara Entekhabi, SMAP science team lead, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Brad Doorn, SMAP applications lead, Science Mission Directorates Applied Sciences Program at NASA Headquarters

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NASA Announces Briefing on New Mission to Track Water in Earths Soil