Jason-3

Successful Ocean-Monitoring Satellite Mission Ends

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Esprit Smith, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
esprit.smith@jpl.nasa.gov

Pascale Bresson, CNES, Paris, France
pascale.bresson@cnes.fr

Raphaël Sart, CNES, Paris, France
raphael.sart@cnes.fr

John Leslie, NOAA National Environmental Satellite and Information Service, Silver Spring, Md.
john.leslie@noaa.gov

Neil Fletcher. EUMETSAT, Darmstadt, Germany
neil.fletcher@eumetsat.int

 

JASON2-2-16
Jason-2/OSTM contributed to a long-term record of global sea levels. This image shows areas in the Pacific Ocean where sea levels were lower (blues) or higher (reds) than normal during the first week of January 2018. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

The Jason-2/Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM), the third in a U.S.-European series of satellite missions designed to measure sea surface height, successfully ended its science mission on Oct. 1. NASA and its mission partners made the decision to end the mission after detecting deterioration in the spacecraft’s power system.

Jason-2/OSTM, a joint NASA mission with the French space agency Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), launched in June 2008. The mission extended the long-term record of sea surface height measurements started by the NASA-CNES TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 missions. Jason-2/OSTM’s 11-year lifetime well exceeded its three-year design life. These measurements are being continued by its successor, Jason-3, launched in 2016.

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