Summary

Description

Jason-3 is the fourth mission in U.S.-European series of satellite missions that measure the height of the ocean surface. Scheduled to launch in 2015, the mission will extend the time series of ocean surface topography measurements begun by the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite mission in 1992 and continuing through the currently operating Jason-1 (launched in 2001) and OSTM/Jason-2 (launched in 2008) missions. These measurements provide scientists with critical information about circulation patterns in the ocean and about both global and regional changes in sea level and the climate implications of a warming world. TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 were cooperative missions between NASA and the French space agency, CNES. Additional partners in the Jason-2 mission included NOAA and Eumetsat. Jason-3 continues the international cooperation, with NOAA and Eumetsat leading the efforts, along with partners NASA and CNES. The primary instrument on Jason-3 is a radar altimeter. The altimeter measures sea-level variations over the global ocean with very high accuracy (as 1.3 inches or 3.3 centimeters, with a goal of achieving 1 inch or 2.5 centimeters). These data consist of raw Level-0 telemetry data from the Jason-3 spacecraft. There are three datatypes available: Housekeeping Telemetry - Recorded (HKTM-R) is stored on the spacecraft for later downlink; Payload Telemetry 1 (PLTM-1) is the payload science data from the core-mission payloads: Poseidon, DORIS, AMR, and GPSP; and Payload Telemetry 2 (PLTM-2) is the payload science data from the passenger mission of opportunity payloads. They are available as CCSDS packet files. These data may be subject to access restrictions. Additional documentation for Jason-3 data is archived at the NODC at: https://archive.nodc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/AMS/prod/accession/details/118276. The documentation includes metadata in International Standards Organization (ISO) format.