The Status and Future Prospect for GRACE After the First Decade

The twin satellites of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) were launched on March 17, 2002 and have operated continuously for almost 12 years. The mission objectives are to sense the spatial and temporal variations of the Earth's mass distribution through its effects on the gravity field at the GRACE satellite altitude. The primary mission objectives of GRACE are to measure: 1) the Earth's time-averaged gravity field over the mission life and 2) the monthly variations in the mean gravity field at wave lengths between 300 and 4000 km. The major cause of the time varying mass is water motion and the GRACE mission has provided a continuous decade long measurement sequences which characterizes the seasonal cycle of mass transport between the oceans, land, cryosphere and atmosphere; its inter-annual variability; and the secular, or long period, mass transport. Measurements of continental aquifer mass change, polar ice mass change and ocean bottom currents are examples of paradigm shifting remote sensing observations enabled by the GRACE satellite measurements. In mid-2013, a complete reanalysis of the mission data, referred to as the RL05 data release, was completed and made available for ongoing science and application studies. This presentation will review some of the reported science improvements from the RL05 data release and the remaining tasks to be conducted to complete the solution, review the results from the 2013 NASA Senior Review and summarize the current mission status and prospects for future operation.