NASA’s Soil Moisture Active/Passive (SMAP) Mission has begun science operations after successfully concluding a three-month commissioning phase during which the spacecraft deployed and spun-up a large antenna reflector feeding a scientific payload consisting of a passive radiometer and active radar to keep tabs on global soil moisture and freeze/thaw state to provide additional data needed in the study of Earth’s water cycle and climate change and for operational applications such as the prediction of adverse conditions such as landslides and droughts.