News
28.01.2009 15:05 Age: 15 yrs
First two Jason-1 maneuvers successful
Category: News of the other missions
Jason 1 has successfully performed its first two maneuvers to reach a -20 km lower orbit, as expected.
"family portrait" of Jason-1, Topex/Poseidon, and OSTM/Jason-2 for 28-Jan-09 at 23:39 UTC, showing the position of all three satellites as they descend to the southeast, passing over our ground station just outside of Toulouse, France. As a result of the maneuvers performed on 26 and 27 January, Jason-1 has now drifted well ahead of OSTM/Jason-2 and Topex/Poseidon, on its way to a new operational orbit on the other side of the Earth.
Both maneuvers were efficient lowering Jason-1 of 10 km each time. Return to nominal Control Command mode has been just executed at 11h22 UT on 28 January. Drift is ongoing.
As a reminder, the ultimate target position for Jason-1 will be 162 degrees, 5 days from Jason-2.
Planning is as follow (to be confirmed):
- 28 January 2009: start of free flight period until the 4th of February
Morning: new orbit computation and 1rst computation for the second series of maneuvers (+ 10km; +9 km and +1km) ) from 4 February to 9 February - From 29 January, to 4 February (free flight period )
Poseidon-2 donot take any measurement for the whole period of maneuvers and in between drift.
New computation for the next 3rd, 4th and 5th maneuvers - 4 February: 3rd maneuver 10h UT
- 6 February: 4th maneuver, 10h UT
- 9 or 10 February: 5th maneuver, 10h UT
- 10 February: end of orbit position change
Further information:
- JPL website: <link http: sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov newsroom features _blank external-link-new-window>Tandem Mission Brings Ocean Currents Into Sharper Focus
February 2000
Image of the month 
