On March 15th, the CNES terrestrial link to South Africa suffered a major internet failure. Since that time it has unfortunately been impossible to recover any telemetry downloaded to our station in Hartebeesthoek. Given the large amount of telemetry generated by the SWOT satellite, the number of passes available in the CNES network to download all the data is insufficient. In order to avoid any loss of measurements, the satellite programming was updated on March 19 to reduce the number of land hydrology measurements (HR Mask) to 45% of the maximum possible data. On March 21, the programming has been re-tuned to increase the available hydrology data to approximately 76%.
Map showing the updated mask reduced to 76%.
This event is temporary and we will return to nominal measurements as soon as the terrestrial link with Hartebeesthoek is re-established.
The SWOT Project