The Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 was a follow-on altimetric mission to the very successful TOPEX/Poseidon mission and Jason-1. It was a joint mission between NASA and CNES (French space agency). It launched 20 June 2008 and began data collection on 12 July 2008. OSTM measured significant wave height, sigma naught (sigma0), dry and wet troposphere and ionosphere, which can be used to calculate sea surface height and anomalies and total electron content.
OSTM had a repeat period of approximately 10 days with 254 passes per cycle. Lists of cycle start times, maneuvers performed to maintain orbit, sateholds and periods of no data collection are provided in the "Related Links" sidebar.
After more than 11 years in orbit, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM) on Jason-2 permanently ceased acquisition of scientific data at 06:48 UTC on 1 October 2019 due to aging-related issues onboard the spacecraft. Approximately three hours later, the final pass 147 for science cycle 644 was produced as an OGDR product and disseminated to operational users. IGDR production ceased about 2.5 days later, GDR production approximately 2 months later. The OGDR, IGDR and GDR data can be found at NOAA.
