NASA has decommissioned its ocean surveying satellite Jason-1 after 11 and a half years citing massive and irreparable system failures as the reason.
Just days after NASA announced the decommissioning of its Galaxy Evolution Explorer, the space agency has announced the retirement of yet another satellite, Jason-1. The ocean surveying satellite was a joint venture between NASA and Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and was launched Dec. 7, 2001.
Jason-1 was initially designed to last for three to five years but provided 11 and a half years of service, tracking the rising sea levels across oceans and aiding forecasters make better weather and climate predications by providing relevant data. NASA finally decided to retire the satellite July 3 after it lost its last remaining transmitter. The space agency first lost contact with Jason-1 June 21. After extensive engineering operations, the non-recoverable system failure was detected.
"After circling the globe more than 53,500 times, Jason -1 useful life has come to an end," announced NASA in a statement released on Wednesday.
Jason-1 scanned the ocean surface in 10-day intervals, mapping sea level, wind speed and wave height for more than 95 percent of the planet's ice-free ocean area. It also helped map a 20-year record of sea-level changes. The satellite was also instrumental in bringing awareness that the global ocean level was rising at a rate of over 3mm/year due to a combination of melting glaciers and expansion driven by the increased heat absorbed by the oceans.
"Jason-1 has been a resounding scientific, technical and international success," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The Jason satellite series provides the most accurate measure of this impact, which is felt all over the globe."
After Jason-2 was calibrated last year, Jason-1's role became secondary. It was then assigned to observe Earth's gravity field over oceans, referred to as a "graveyard" orbit, where its extra fuel depleted.
"Even from its 'graveyard' orbit, Jason-1 continued to make unprecedented new observations of the Earth's gravity field, with precise measurements right till the end," said Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales in Paris.
