The SARAL/AltiKa mission: A Step Forward to the Future of Altimetry
Sponsor
This work was sponsored by CNES as part of the TOSCA program. Ocean Next contribution is for a part supported by CNES and CMEMS. Thanks to CNES and ISRO for having adapted their plan of operations in order to acquire the useful dataset of SARAL/AltiKa over the Salar de Uyuni. The sea ice thickness and snow depth studies have also been supported by the Cryo-SeaNice ESA project and the data base is available at LEGOS/CTOH.
Published In
Advances in Space Research
Document Type
Citation
Publication Date
1-1-2020
Abstract
The CNES/ISRO altimetric satellite SARAL/AltiKa was launched in February 2013 and since then has provided useful data for various scientific and operational applications in oceanography, hydrology, cryospheric sciences and geodesy. However, a Reaction Wheel problem forced relaxation of the repeatability constraint on the satellite's orbit, which has been drifting slowly since July 2016. Beyond the expected contributions of this mission and its very good integration into the objectives of the constellation of altimetric satellites, it has become more and more apparent that specific contributions and innovations related to the main specification of SARAL/AltiKa, that is to say the use of the Ka-band, have clearly emerged. The advantages of the Ka-band are in short the reduction of ionosphere effects, the smaller footprint, the better horizontal resolution and the higher vertical resolution. A drawback of the Ka-band is the attenuation due to water/water vapor in case of rain and the resulting loss of data. The main objective of this paper is to highlight the specific advances of the Ka-band in different scientific and technical fields and to show why they are promising for the future and open the way to several missions or mission projects. Although unplanned initially, the fine coverage of the Drifting Phase brings some interesting openings especially for geodesy and hydrology applications.
Rights
© 2020 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Locate the Document
DOI
10.1016/j.asr.2020.01.030
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/39016
Citation Details
Verron, J., Bonnefond, P., Andersen, O., Ardhuin, F., Bergé-Nguyen, M., Bhowmick, S., ... & Zaron, E. D. (2020). The SARAL/AltiKa mission: A step forward to the future of altimetry. Advances in Space Research.