TOPEX/Poseidon
Sign in to saveTOPEX/Poseidon was a joint satellite altimeter mission between NASA, the U.S. space agency; and CNES, the French space agency, to map ocean surface topography. Launched on August 10, 1992, it was the first major oceanographic research satellite after Seasat. TOPEX/Poseidon helped revolutionize oceanography by providing data previously impossible to obtain. Oceanographer Walter Munk described TOPEX/Poseidon as "the most successful ocean experiment of all time." A malfunction ended normal satellite operations in January 2006.
Key facts
- Spaceflight.name
- TOPEX/Poseidon
- Spaceflight.image
- TOPEX;Poseidon.jpg
- Spaceflight.image_size
- 275px
- Spaceflight.image_caption
- Artist's rendering of the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite.
- Spaceflight.mission_type
- Remote sensing
- Spaceflight.operator
- NASA and CNES
- Spaceflight.COSPAR_ID
- 1992-052A
- Spaceflight.SATCAT
- 22076
- Spaceflight.mission_duration
- Achieved: In Orbit:
- Spaceflight.launch_rocket
- Ariane 42P
- Spaceflight.launch_site
- Guiana Space Centre, Kourou
- Spaceflight.deactivated
- October 2005
- Spaceflight.orbit_reference
- Geocentric
- Spaceflight.orbit_regime
- Non Sun-synchronous
- Spaceflight.orbit_inclination
- 66 degrees
- Spaceflight.orbit_eccentricity
- 0.000
- Spaceflight.orbit_period
- 112 minutes
- Spaceflight.apsis
- gee
via Wikipedia infobox
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
10 sectionsContents
- Description
- Goal
- Results
- Use of results
- Measurements continue
- Instruments
- Gallery
- See also
- References
- External links
TOPEX/Poseidon was a joint satellite altimeter mission between NASA, the U.S. space agency; and CNES, the French space agency, to map ocean surface topography. Launched on August 10, 1992, it was the first major oceanographic research satellite after Seasat. TOPEX/Poseidon helped revolutionize oceanography by providing data previously impossible to obtain. Oceanographer Walter Munk described TOPEX/Poseidon as "the most successful ocean experiment of all time." A malfunction ended normal satellite operations in January 2006.
==Description==
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “TOPEX/Poseidon” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.