G41B-02
The Status and Future Directions for the GRACE Mission
Thursday, 17 December 2015: 08:15
2002 (Moscone West)
Byron D Tapley, Univ Texas Austin, Austin, TX, United States, Frank Flechtner, Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany, Michael M Watkins, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States and Srinivas V Bettadpur, University of Texas at Austin, Center for Space Research, Austin, TX, United States
Abstract:
The twin satellites of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) were launched on March 17, 2002 and have operated for over 13 years. The mission objectives are to sense the spatial and temporal variations of the Earth’s mass through its effects on the gravity field at the GRACE satellite altitude. The major cause of the time varying mass is water motion and the GRACE mission has provided a continuous decade long measurement sequences which characterizes the seasonal cycle of mass transport between the oceans, land, cryosphere and atmosphere; its inter-annual variability; and the climate driven secular, or long period, mass transport signals. In 2012, a complete reanalysis of the mission data, referred to as the RL05 data release, was initiated. The monthly solutions from this effort were released in mid-2013 with the mean fields following in 2014 and 2015. The mission is entering the final phases of operations. The current mission operations strategy emphasizes extending the mission lifetime to achieve mission overlap with the GRACE Follow On Mission. This presentation will review the mission status and the projections for mission lifetime, summarize plans for the RL 06 data re-analysis, describe the issues that influence the operations philosophy and discuss the impact the operations may have on the scientific data products.
