Whole year of global sea surface salinity

It follows an interesting video from NASA’s Goddard Space Center about SAC-D/Aquarius mission, which shows a whole year of data -from December 2011 through December 2012- of global sea surface salinity.

THE AQUARIUS INSTRUMENT

Aquarius is a NASA instrument aboard the Argentine SAC-D spacecraft. Its mission is to measure global sea surface salinity to better predict future climate conditions.

Aquarius was shipped to Argentina on June 1, 2009 to be mounted in the INVAP built SAC-D satellite. It came back to Vandenberg Air Force Base on March 31, 2011.

For the joint mission, Argentina provided the SAC-D spacecraft and additional science instruments, while NASA provided the Aquarius salinity sensor and the rocket launch platform. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed the Aquarius Mission development for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise based in Washington, D.C., and NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is managing the mission after launch.

The observatory was successfully launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on June 10, 2011. After its launch aboard a Delta II from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, SAC-D was carried into a 657 km (408 mi) sun-synchronous orbit to begin its 3-year mission.

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