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.2 min read

NASA Announces News Briefing on Aquarius/Sac-D Mission

Jet Propulsion Laboratory https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ May 12, 2011
Artist's concept of the Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft, a collaboration between NASA and Argentina's space agency, with participation from Brazil, Canada, France and Italy. Aquarius, the NASA-built primary instrument on the spacecraft, will take NASA's first space-based measurements of ocean surface salinity, a key missing variable in satellite observations of Earth that links ocean circulation, the global balance of freshwater and climate.› Full image and caption
Credit: NASA

NASA will hold a news briefing on Tuesday, May 17, at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT), on the agency's next Earth-observing satellite mission, Aquarius/SAC-D, scheduled to launch on June 9.

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA will hold a news briefing on Tuesday, May 17, at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT), on the agency's next Earth-observing satellite mission, Aquarius/SAC-D, scheduled to launch on June 9.

The event will be held at NASA Headquarters in Washington and will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv . In addition, the event will be carried live on Ustream, with a live chat box available, at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

Panelists will discuss the international spacecraft mission, a collaboration between NASA and Argentina's space agency, Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE), with participation by Brazil, Canada, France and Italy. CONAE provided the SAC-D spacecraft.

The mission's primary instrument, NASA's Aquarius, will make the agency's first space-based global measurements of the salinity of the ocean surface. Salinity measurements, a key missing variable in satellite observations of Earth, link ocean circulation, the global balance of freshwater and climate. Seven other SAC-D instruments, contributed by Argentina, Canada, France and Italy, will collect environmental data for a wide range of applications, including studies of natural hazards, air quality, land processes and epidemiology. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., jointly built the Aquarius instrument with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and will manage Aquarius through the mission's commissioning phase and archive mission data.

The panelists are:

- Eric Lindstrom, Aquarius program scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington
- Eric Ianson, Aquarius program executive, NASA Headquarters, Washington
- Gary Lagerloef, Aquarius principal investigator, Earth & Space Research, Seattle
- Amit Sen, Aquarius project manager, JPL
- Daniel Caruso, Aquarius/SAC-D project manager, CONAE, Buenos Aires

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .

For more information about Aquarius/SAC-D, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/aquarius and http://www.conae.gov.ar/eng/principal.html .
More information about JPL is online at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov . Follow us via social media, including Facebook and Twitter. Details are at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/social .
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Media Contacts

Alan Buis

818-354-0474

alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov

Steve Cole

202-358-0918

stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

2011-140b

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