Jay Clemens
Airbus‘ defense and space business unit has been selected to develop a satellite system for ocean surface topography measurements under a contract with the European Space Agency.
The Jason-CS/Sentinel-6 satellite will work to measure the distance between the ocean surface and the satellite, and map the global ocean topography every 10 days, Airbus said Friday.
The satellite will orbit the Earth for five and a half years and Darmstadt, Germany-based EUMETSAT will oversee the mission.
Francois Auque, head of Airbus space systems, said the company will leverage its designs and processes applied to previous Earth observation missions for the project.
The Sentinel-6 mission is part of the European Earth observation program Copernicus and aims to perform the measurements on a continuous basis from 2020.
