Category: News of the Jason-2 mission

One week after launch, everything goes well with Jason-2. While not yet on its final orbit (which will be reached on July 3rd), first measurements and calibrations begun, for testing purpose.

Cnes, Eumetsat, Nasa and Noaa are cooperating to test every component of the ground segment. Results are very promising. The first Doris preliminary orbits (MOE) were computed, thus leading to the first IGDR product processing by Cnes (see tracks on <link fileadmin images news mod_actus tracesj2.kmz download>Google Earth).

Those Jason-2 IGDR data were compared to Jason-1's, and even though Jason-2 is uncalibrated, they are very similar (note that there are less Jason-2 data, due among other things to manoeuvres made to bring it to its final orbit).

<link fileadmin images news mod_actus data_nb_swh_j2-j1.gif download><link fileadmin images news mod_actus data_nb_sigma0_j2-j1gif.gif download>
Number of data for Jason-2 (red) and Jason-1 (blue) for Significant Wave height and Sigma0 coefficient in Ku-band. The shape of both curves is very close between Jason-2 and Jason-1, including mean and standard deviation (even though there are less Jason-2 data at this point) (Credits CLS/Cnes)

Jason-2 tests and calibrations will go on in the next weeks.