Operations began on 3 July 2017 at 19:00 when the first manoeuvre was uploaded and executed. It consisted in two thrusts at 20:43 and 21:40. This first operation was successful and lowered the satellite’s orbit by 4.7 km from its initial 1,336 km orbit. The second manoeuvre took place on 4 July and lowered the orbit by another 4.5 km. The third operation took place the next day on Wednesday 5 July and lowered it another 8.9 km, followed by a fourth 8.6 km decrease on Thursday 6 July.
The final fine-tuning operation was carried out in the night between Sunday 9 and Monday 10 July. It adjusted Jason-2’s orbit by a mere 40 m! In total, the orbit was lowered by 26.7 km. All operations were carried out successfully.
Next week’s schedule includes gyroscopic calibration on Monday 10, followed by payload initialisation, and calibration for the Poseidon and AMR instruments.
© CNES
