Status of Aquarius Salinity

Abstract

Aquarius, an L-band radar/radiometer instrument combination designed to measure ocean salinity. It was launched June 10, 2011 as part of the Aquarius/SAC-D observatory, a partnership between NASA, which provided Aquarius, and the Argentine space agency (CONAE) which provided the spacecraft bus, SAC-D. The observatory was lost four years later on June 7, 2015 when a failure in the power distribution network resulted in loss of control of the spacecraft. The Aquarius Mission formally ended December 31, 2017. The last major milestone was the release of the Project's final version of the salinity retrieval (Version 5.0). Version 5.0 meets the Mission requirements for accuracy and reflects the continuing progress and understanding developed by the Science Team over the lifetime of the mission.