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At Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, agency leaders held a science briefing to discuss the Jason-3 mission two days before the satellite’s scheduled liftoff aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4. Pictured from left to right are George Diller of NASA Public Affairs; Laury Miller, Jason-3 program scientist and chief of the NOAA Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry; Josh Willis, Jason-3 project scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Marc Cohen, associate director and chief of Low Earth Orbit Programmes for EUMETSAT; and Sophie Coutin Faye, chief, Altimetry and Precise Positioning Office, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, France’s space agency.

Built by Thales Alenia of France, Jason-3 will measure the topography of the ocean surface for a four-agency international partnership consisting of NOAA, NASA, CNES, and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.