NASA Announces News Briefing on Aquarius/Sac-D Mission

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 PHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Alan Buis 818-354-0474
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov

Steve Cole 202-358-0918
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

Event advisory: 2011-140b May 12, 2011

NASA Announces News Briefing on Aquarius/Sac-D Mission

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-140b&cid=release_2011-140b

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will hold a news briefing on Tuesday, May 17, at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m.
EDT), on the agency's next Earth-observing satellite mission, Aquarius/SAC-D, scheduled to launch
on June 9.

The event will be held at NASA Headquarters in Washington and will be broadcast live on NASA
Television and streamed at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv . In addition, the event will be carried live on
Ustream, with a live chat box available, at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

Local reporters are invited to watch the briefing via satellite, with two-way question-and-answer
capability, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Reporters who would like
to come to JPL must RSVP to the Media Relations Office in advance at 818-354-5011. Valid
media credentials are required, and non-U.S. citizens must also bring a passport.

Panelists will discuss the international spacecraft mission, a collaboration between NASA and
Argentina's space agency, Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE), with
participation by Brazil, Canada, France and Italy. CONAE provided the SAC-D spacecraft.

The mission's primary instrument, NASA's Aquarius, will make the agency's first space-based global
measurements of the salinity of the ocean surface. Salinity measurements, a key missing variable in
satellite observations of Earth, link ocean circulation, the global balance of freshwater and climate.
Seven other SAC-D instruments, contributed by Argentina, Canada, France and Italy, will collect
environmental data for a wide range of applications, including studies of natural hazards, air quality,
land processes and epidemiology. JPL jointly built the Aquarius instrument with NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and will manage Aquarius through the mission's commissioning
phase and archive mission data.

The panelists are:

- Eric Lindstrom, Aquarius program scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington
- Eric Ianson, Aquarius program executive, NASA Headquarters, Washington
- Gary Lagerloef, Aquarius principal investigator, Earth & Space Research, Seattle
- Amit Sen, Aquarius project manager, JPL
- Daniel Caruso, Aquarius/SAC-D project manager, CONAE, Buenos Aires

The briefing will be held in the James E. Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Reporters unable to attend in person may ask questions from participating NASA centers, in addition
to JPL, or by telephone. To participate by phone, reporters must contact Dwayne Brown at 202-358-
1726 or dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov by 6 a.m. PDT (9 a.m. EDT) on May 17.

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .

For more information about Aquarius/SAC-D, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/aquarius and
http://www.conae.gov.ar/eng/principal.html .
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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