Watch Virtual Briefing on Launch of Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich Satellite
The U.S.-European partnership will track sea level height. Learn more about the mission in this live event.
Officials from
NASA and partner agencies will discuss the upcoming launch of the Sentinel-6
Michael Freilich ocean-monitoring satellite during a media briefing at 10 a.m.
EDT (7 a.m. PDT), Friday, Oct. 16. The launch is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 10.
The media briefing will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website, as
well as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
The spacecraft
is named in honor of Michael Freilich, the former director of NASA's Earth
Science Division and tireless advocate for advancing satellite measurements of
the ocean. After launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California
and once in orbit, the satellite will collect sea level measurements down to a
few centimeters across 90% of the world's ocean.
Sentinel-6
Michael Freilich is the first of two Copernicus Sentinel-6/Jason-CS (Continuity
of Service) satellites launching five years apart and will extend a nearly
30-year dataset of ocean data. The mission is being developed jointly by ESA (European
Space Agency) in the context of the European Copernicus program led by the
European Commission, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of
Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), NASA, and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with funding support from the European Commission
and contributions from France's space agency, Centre National d'Etudes
Spatiales.
Briefing participants, in speaking order,
are:
- Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science
Mission Directorate in Washington
- Pierre Delsaux, deputy director general for space, European Commission in Brussels
- Josef Aschbacher, director for Earth Observation Programmes at
ESA, from the ESA Centre for Earth Observation in Frascati, Italy
- Karen St. Germain, director of NASA's Earth Science Division in
Washington
- Alain Ratier, director-general of EUMETSAT in Darmstadt, Germany
- Parag Vaze, project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Southern California
- Nadya Vinogradova-Shiffer, program scientist at NASA Headquarters
in Washington
- Tim Dunn, launch director for NASA's Launch Services
Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida
The
public may ask questions using the hashtag #SeeingTheSeas on social media
during the briefing.
To learn more
about NASA's study of sea level rise, visit:
https://sealevel.nasa.gov
For
more information about Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/sentinel-6
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