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- [Source: NASA Science Mission Directorate, http://nasascience.nasa.gov/missions/grace ]
The primary goal of the GRACE mission is to accurately map variations in the Earth's gravity field over its 5-year lifetime. The GRACE mission has two identical spacecrafts flying about 220 kilometers apart in a polar orbit 500 kilometers above the Earth. It maps the Earth's gravity fields by making accurate measurements of the distance between the two satellites, using geodetic quality Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers and a microwave ranging system. This provides scientists from all over the world with an efficient and cost-effective way to map the Earth's gravity fields with unprecedented accuracy. The results from this mission yield crucial information about the distribution and flow of mass within the Earth and it's surroundings. The gravity variations that GRACE studies include: changes due to surface and deep currents in the ocean; runoff and ground water storage on land masses; exchanges between ice sheets or glaciers and the oceans; and variations of mass within the Earth. Another goal of the mission is to create a better profile of the Earth's atmosphere. The results from GRACE make a huge contribution to NASA's Earth science goals, Earth Observation System (EOS) and global climate change studies. GRACE is a joint partnership between the NASA in the United States and Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Luft und Raumfahrt (DLR) in Germany. Dr. Byron Tapley of The University of Texas Center for Space Research (UTCSR) is the Principal Investigator (PI), and Dr. Christoph Reigber of the GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ) Potsdam is the Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI). Project management and systems engineering activities are carried out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Group: Platform_Details Entry_ID: GRACE Group: Platform_Identification Platform_Category: Earth Observation Satellites Short_Name: GRACE Long_Name: Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment End_Group Group: Platform_Associated_Instruments Short_Name: BLACKJACK Short_Name: GPS Short_Name: GPS RECEIVERS Short_Name: GRACE LRR Short_Name: IPU Short_Name: KBR Short_Name: MAGNETOMETERS Short_Name: MTQ Short_Name: OBDH Short_Name: SCA Short_Name: SCS Short_Name: SLR Short_Name: SUPERSTAR Short_Name: THR Short_Name: TNK Short_Name: USO End_Group Group: Orbit Orbit_Inclination: 89 degrees Period: 94.5 minutes Perigee: 483.0 km Apogee: 508.0 km Orbit_Type: LEO > Low Earth Orbit > Polar Non-Sun-Synchronous End_Group Creation_Date: 2007-05-01 Online_Resource: http://nasascience.nasa.gov/missions/grace Online_Resource: http://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/ Online_Resource: http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/ Online_Resource: http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/grace/ Online_Resource: http://op.gfz-potsdam.de/grace/ Online_Resource: http://grace.sgt-inc.com/ Online_Resource: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GRACE/ Sample_Image: http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/graphics/placeholder.jpg Group: Platform_Logistics Launch_Date: 2002-03-17 Launch_Site: Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russia Design_Life: 5 years Primary_Sponsor: USA/NASA Primary_Sponsor: Germany/DLR Primary_Sponsor: Potsdam/GFZ Primary_Sponsor: UTexas/Center for Space Research End_Group End_Group
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