GRACE mission comes to an end after 15 years of successful operation

DLR German Aerospace Center
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GRACE mission comes to an end after 15 years of successful operation - Measuring gravitational changes and precisely documenting climate change


After more than 15 years, the German-US Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) for precise measuring of Earth's gravity field has come to an end. Since its launch from the Russian cosmodrome in Plesetsk on 17 March 2002 on board a Rockot launcher, the twin satellites GRACE-1 and GRACE-2 have been orbiting Earth in close formation flight, precisely recording how Earth's gravity field changes over time. GRACE was a joint mission by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, California) and the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR). The scientific analysis was carried out by the Center for Space Research at the University of Texas at Austin and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum; GFZ) at the Helmholtz Centre in Potsdam.



Full article with images: http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10081/151_read-24627/year-all/#/gallery/28808

DLR space research:
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