SMAP telecom and science antenna multipath interference

NASA´s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission is a sun-synchronous low Earth orbit mission that will perform a global mapping of soil moisture and freeze/thaw state. The data collected will be useful in understanding the land/surface processes and the link between water, energy and carbon cycles. This will lead to better weather forecasting, and improve flood prediction and drought monitoring capability. SMAP uses a Radiometer and a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) which share a high gain 6-meter diameter offset mesh reflector, fed by a dual polarization, dual band feed-horn. Two low gain antennas, one in S-band and one in X-band provide telecommunications. All these antennas and frequencies make SMAP an RF-rich environment that could corrupt telecom and/or contaminate science. This paper covers SMAP´s telecom performance with interference due to multipath reflections from the 6-m reflector, verification challenges, and its mitigation.