CoAuthors

Constantine Mavrocordatos (ESTEC\\\\European Space Agency, Netherlands); Craig Donlon (ESTEC\\European Space Agency, The Netherlands); Pierre Féménias (ESRIN/European Space Agency, Italy); Tommaso Parrinelo (ESTEC\\European Space Agency, Netherlands)

A new calibration site at a cross-over point of the tracks of multiple missions (Sentinel-3A, Sentinel-3B, Jason series, SARAL/AltiKa, etc.) has been established in West Crete, Greece. This research infrastructure has been already established and is operational with a microwave transponder. It aims at monitoring and controlling, in an absolute sense, satellite altimetry measurements and results by (1) continuously keeping track of their quality, biases, errors and drifts and (2) by establishing an absolute reference of altimetry on a common and reliable standard for settling relations among different, as well as on ascending and descending orbits, at the same location and settings. This external calibration site, called CDN1, will act as a monitoring service, mainly, for the Sentinel-3 satellite missions. In this work, successful responses of the transponder as well as calibration results for the Cryosat-2 will be presented