The session will focus on ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Mission, which will be launched in November 2009. The SMOS mission will provide two key variables in the water cycle - soil moisture and ocean salinity - both being important to improve climate research and change predictions. The commissioning phase, the first 6 months of the mission lifetime, will see a variety of calibration and validation activities. They are an important prerequisite to the performance verification, demonstrating that the instrument meets its requirements, but they are also important for the validation of geophysical parameters, such as soil moisture and sea surface salinity.

We in particular invite contributions on SMOS related calibration and validation activities as well as first results of scientific studies using SMOS data. This will encompass, if not exclusively, the calibration and performance of MIRAS, the Microwave Imaging Radiometer using Aperture Synthesis instrument on-board SMOS, results from in-situ and airborne campaigns, retrieval algorithm development and activities under ESA's Announcements of Opportunity for i) SMOS calibration and validation, and ii) scientific studies. We also welcome contributions focussing on assimilating SMOS data into predictive models and developing new products based on SMOS data.