TOPEX/POSEIDON is a satellite mission that will use a radar altimeter system together with precision tracking systems to measure sea level, thus yielding global ocean topography. This will enable not only the study of the circulation of the world's oceans, but also the study of ocean tides and marine geodesy and geophysics. The mission is jointly conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the French space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). Current plans call for launch of the satellite by an Ariane launch vehicle in August 1992. The primary mission will last for 3 years, with the possibility of extending the mission 2 more years. The mission has been coordinated with a number of international oceanographic and meteorological programs, including the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) and the Tropical Ocean and Global Atmosphere Programme (TOGA), both of which are sponsored by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). The observations of TOPEX/POSEIDON are timed to provide a global perspective for interpreting the in situ measurements collected by these programs, which will in turn be combined with satellite observations to achieve for the first time ever a global, four-dimensional description of the circulation of the world's oceans.
TOPEX/POSEIDON Prelaunch Mission Operations Report(MOR)
1992
64 pages
Report
No indication
English
TOPEX/POSEIDON Mission Overview
NTRS | 1994
|TOPEX/POSEIDON Mission Early Results
NTRS | 1993
|TOPEX/POSEIDON Flight Battery Operations
NTRS | 1998
|TOPEX-POSEIDON: le concept de mission
Online Contents | 1995
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