The budget planning of space missions usually includes the financing of mission operations for a period that has fixed well before launch. From a technical point-of-view, however, the life-time of instruments and also the amount of consumables such as fuel enables continued operation beyond the originally planned date in many cases. The European Space Agency (ESA) supports selected and strategically relevant missions after the end of the nominal mission duration by covering the costs of mission operations. For GRACE-FO, ESA will cover those costs from May 2023 onwards.

Prior to financing mission operations, ESA is supporting additional accompanying work for the scientific evaluation of the GRACE-FO mission data. Section 1.3 contributes to this activity with its diverse expertise related to mass transport processes in the System Earth. These include, in particular, numerical simulations of gravity field changes due to Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA), elastic deformations of the crust due to oceanic loads with special consideration of three-dimensional Earth structures, as well as the transient effects of atmospheric mass anomalies on the Earth's gravity field. At the same time, the Section also contributes to the quantification of the water mass deficit in the past drought summers in Europe from the GRACE-FO mission data.

Funding Agency: European Space Agency (ESA)

Duration: 01.06.2021 until 31.05.2023

Website: https://earth.esa.int/eogateway/news/introducing-the-newest-esa-third-party-missions