Further Plans for the GRACE Mission
Abstract
The twin satellites of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), which were launched on March 17, 2002, operated for more than 15 years. The 15-year record of GRACE measurements recorded the seasonal cycle of mass transport between the oceans, land, cryosphere and atmosphere; its inter-annual variability; and the climate driven secular, or long period, mass transport signals. The global perspective and the accuracy of the measurements provided paradigm shifting insight into the Earth system interactions. Following a loss of battery capability, the nominal mission ended on October 10, 2018, when efforts to return to the science operations mode, after exiting from the last solar occultation period, were unsuccessful. The last data collected was for the month of June, 2017. The data collected during the last five years of operation were affected by varying degrees of non-nominal satellite operation, which led to a degradation in the Level 2 data accuracy. The mission closeout activities will include a final reprocessing of the mission data to improve the overall solution accuracy. In addition, the GRACE mission end, prior to the GRACE FO launch, dictates a break of approximately one year in the scientific data sets provided by the GRACE and GRACE FO Missions. This presentation will discuss the plans for the final GRACE data processing and for establishing a connection between the two missions.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.G23A..01T
- Keywords:
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- 1217 Time variable gravity;
- GEODESY AND GRAVITYDE: 1218 Mass balance;
- GEODESY AND GRAVITYDE: 1223 Ocean/Earth/atmosphere/hydrosphere/cryosphere interactions;
- GEODESY AND GRAVITYDE: 1240 Satellite geodesy: results;
- GEODESY AND GRAVITY