News
GFO unavailable over the past few days
The satellite has been shutdown in response to the onboard problem of overheating reaction wheels as the satellite goes into a period of full sun. If everything goes well, GFO may be turned on in early November. However, even though no final word has been said on the termination of GFO, it is possible that the satellite operations will be stopped in calendar year 2009.
For the record, GFO was launched in February 1998 and its mission is to provide real-time ocean topography data to the US Navy. Scientific and commercial users have access to these data through Noaa.
Without GFO, Duacs will be merging only two missions: Jason-1 and Envisat. This long shortage of data will cause a significant hit to the quality of the Duacs multi-satellite products in NRT. This situation could affect the duration of the current calibration phase of Jason-2. It is therefore possible that this latter be shortened to allow Jason-1 to move on a new orbit earlier.
Further information:
- Missions : <link internal-link>GFO
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