Thales Alenia Space… A Decade Of Altimetry (Satellite)

[SatNews] Thales Alenia Space joins French space agency CNES and NASA of the United States to celebrate the 10th anniversary…

….of the Jason-1 satellite launched on December 7, 2001. Thales Alenia Space originally teamed up with French Space Agency CNES to develop the technology for the Poseidon spaceborne altimeter, and tested on the Topex satellite as early as 1992, marking a real revolution in oceanography. The accuracy of the measurements delivered by this high-precision instrument demonstrated the thermohaline circulation (movement of currents) in the oceans, a major energy engine governing the global climate, as well as the rise in sea levels due to global warming.

Jason-1 was fitted with a follow-on Poseidon 2 instrument, enabling it to ensure the continuity of these measurements and deploy a real operational oceanographic monitoring system in conjunction with weather forecasting agencies Eumetsat in Europe and NOAA in the United States. Originally designed for a service life of three years, Jason-1 is still in operation ten years after launch. Thales Alenia Space was prime contractor for the Jason system and its main instrument. It also built the Jason-2 satellite, launched in 2008, and is developing the Jason-3 satellite for launch in 2014.

Due to Thales Alenia Space’s development and production experience in spaceborne altimetry, the company was also selected to build the main instruments on other satellites from around the world: Cryosat and Sentinel 3 for ESA, GFO-2 for the U.S. Navy, GEO-IKP for Russia, Saral for France and India, and CFOSat for France and China.

The launch of Jason-1 was also the first flight of the Proteus platform, developed by Thales Alenia Space with CNES, and subsequently used with great success on several CNES missions in partnership with NASA and ESA: Calipso (to study aerosols in the atmosphere), Corot (search for exoplanets), SMOS (ocean salinity and soil humidity) … and of course on Jason-2 and -3.