Nasa has awarded a contract to Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) for the launch of the Sentinel-6A mission, which is expected to take place in November 2020.
Under the deal, a SpaceX Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket is scheduled to launch the Sentinel-6A satellite from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, US.
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For the proposed launch, Nasa expects to spend $97m to cover the launch service and other mission-related costs.
The SpaceX launch service will be managed by Nasa’s Launch Services Programme at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, US.
Development of the Sentinel-6A mission is being carried out under a partnership between Nasa, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), European Space Agency and European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).
Following the launch, the mission is expected to offer operational ocean altimetry to continue the ocean topography measurements and the long-term global sea surface height data, delivery of which began in 1992 by the Topography Experiment (TOPEX) / Poseidon and Jason 1, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM) / Jason-2 and Jason-3 missions.
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By GlobalDataAs part of its secondary objective, the mission will also collect high-resolution vertical profiles of temperature using the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Radio-Occultation sounding technique to evaluate temperature changes in the troposphere and stratosphere and support numerical weather prediction.
In a separate development, Nasa selected United Launch Services (ULS) to launch the Landsat 9 mission.
Expected to be launched onboard a ULS Atlas V 401 rocket by June 2021, the mission seeks to continue the existing Landsat programme’s role in monitoring, understanding and managing the land resources needed to sustain human life.
