The first polarimetric GNSS-Reflectometer instrument in space improves the SMAP mission’s sensitivity over densely vegetated areas

The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission has dramatically benefited our knowledge of the Earth’s surface processes. The SMAP mission was initially designed to provide complementary L-band measurements from a radiometer and a radar, producing geophysical measurements at a finer spatial resolution than the radiometer alone. Both instruments, sensitive to the geophysical parameters in the swath, provided independent measurements at different spatial resolutions. A few months after SMAP’s launch, the radar transmitter’s high-power amplifier suffered an anomaly, and the instrument could no longer return data. During recovery activities, the SMAP mission switched the radar receiver frequency facilitating the reception of Global Positioning System (GPS) signals scattered off the Earth’s surface, and enabling the radar to become the first spaceborne polarimetric Global Navigation Satellite System – Reflectometry (GNSS-R) instrument. With more than 7 years of continued measurements, SMAP GNSS-R data are the most extensive existing GNSS-R dataset and the only one providing GNSS-R polarimetric measurements. We demonstrate that the SMAP polarimetric GNSS-R reflectivity, derived from Stokes parameters mathematical formulation, can enhance the radiometer data over dense vegetation areas, recovering some of the original SMAP radar capability to contribute to the science products and pioneering the first polarimetric GNSS-R mission.