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Palomar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2002-05-30

Posts: 9,734

Re: Goodbye to Topex/Poseidon

Successful 13-year mission over

*T/P completed 62,000 orbits of Earth.  Its data was the subject of over 2,100 research publications. 

Article gives a rundown of major achievements by this mission.

"Topex/Poseidon was built to fly up to five years, but it became history's longest Earth-orbiting radar mission," said Topex/Poseidon Project Scientist Dr. Lee-Lueng Fu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It provided, on average, more than 98 percent of the science data it was designed to collect in every 10-day measurement cycle, a remarkable achievement."

"Topex/Poseidon revolutionized the study of Earth's oceans, providing the first continuous, global coverage of ocean surface topography and allowing us to see important week-to-week oceanic variations," said Dr. Mary Cleave, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "Its data made a huge difference in our understanding of the oceans and their effect on global climatic conditions."

--Cindy 

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We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)