Topex/Poseidon was launched 25 years ago. It was the result of a cooperation between Nasa, the US Space Agency, and Cnes, the French one. It was also the beginning of many more years of collaboration, still ongoing, and with new projects under preparation - the Swot (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) mission being the most innovative, but not the only one.

Sea level rise, lake and river levels, bathymetry, applications are among the visible outputs, developed by the thousands of teams around the world using altimetry from those satellites.

Jason-3 is now "the" reference mission taking over the historical orbit of Topex/Poseidon. It should enable to reach a 30-year climatologically-relevant time series. And it will be followed on by Jason-CSA (also called Sentinel-6A) in 2020 and its twin, Jason-CSB (Sentinel-6B) in 2025. To be continued!