Jason-3 orbit change
DUACS system version : 19.2.0
Implementation date : May 2022
The satellite Jason-3 was moved to an interleaved orbit. The orbit manoeuvrers started on April 7th 2022, at the end of cycle 226 which was the last Jason-3 cycle on the nominal ground track. Jason-3 was slowly moved away from its successor Sentinel-6A. The final interleaved orbit was reached on April 25th 2022 and the first cycle of measurement was numbered 300.
Jason-3 was reintroduced in the SL-TAC system after the end of the orbit change manoeuvres, increasing the number of altimeters in the constellation. The impact for the users was that measurements were available from seven altimeters, with an additional dataset corresponding to the Jason-3 measurement on its interleaved orbit. The Jason-3/Sentinel-6A interleaved duo is optimized for mesoscale and circulation observation as previously discussed in Dibarboure et al., (2011) for the Jason-1/Jason-2 tandem. This improved sampling contributes to improve the quality of the SLA gridded products (Level4 products).
The measurement errors of Jason-3 on its new orbit are the same as on its historical repeat orbit.
The Jason-3 measurements on it interleaved orbit is disseminated in a new dataset “j3n”.