News: TOPEX/Poseidon Sails Off Into the Sunset

After a remarkable 13-year voyage of discovery, TOPEX/Poseidon, the first great oceanographic research vessel to sail into space, ended its mission Wednesday, 18th January 2006. The mission's most important achievement was to determine the patterns of ocean circulation - how heat stored in the ocean moves from one place to another.

Data obtained from Topex/Poseidon's help were instrumental in:
- providing the first continuous, global coverage of ocean surface topography
- the first decade-long global descriptions of seasonal and yearly ocean current changes
- refined estimates of rising global sea level during the past decade
- a new understanding of the role tides play in mixing the deep ocean
- developing the most accurate ever global ocean tides' models
- providing the first global data set to test ocean general circulation model performance
- demonstrating that global positioning system measurements in space could determine spacecraft positions with unprecedented accuracy, enabling rapid delivery of data.

Image credit and news source: NASA Jet Propulsion Lab