Johan Nilsson (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, United States); Jean-Damien Desjonquères (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, United States); Shailen Desai (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, United States)

The Jason-3 spacecraft has been collecting sea level measurements along the historical groundtrack from February 2016 to April 2022 (cycle 227). Following the decision to have Sentinel-6 take over as new reference mission, Jason-3 has been moved to the Interleaved Orbit. As of April 25th, 2022 (cycle 300), the Jason-3 mission has resumed operations and now complements the Sentinel-6 data for an optimal time and space coverage.
We present a summary of calibration and validation results highlighting that the Jason-3 mission on the Interleaved Orbit continues to provide altimetry products of high value for oceanographic applications at the mesoscale level and for climate studies. The analysis is based on the GDR-F products and includes comparing the performance using JPL’s orbit determination based on GPSP data only.