It’s incredibly exciting to see its design realized in hardware, with test results confirming that it performs even better than expected.”Īfter passing its last critical design review in February, PACE has entered its integration and testing phase of development. Watching OCI be built has finally made the mission feel real. “Test versions of PACE’s instruments were evaluated to support these critical design reviews. “The PACE project spent five years creating our mission design, and this milestone is proof that it’s credible,” said Jeremy Werdell, an oceanographer in the Ocean Ecology Laboratory at NASA Goddard and PACE’s project scientist. The mission even has a ride locked in: SpaceX of Hawthorne, California will provide a Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket to post the PACE spacecraft to its orbit 420 miles (676 kilometers) above Earth. An engineering test unit of its key instrument, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), is under construction at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and both the instrument and spacecraft will soon be tested in rigorous conditions that simulate launch and orbit. Credit: NASA/Michael StarobinĪfter passing its last critical design review in February 2020 – a rigorous evaluation by NASA science and engineering experts to ensure the mission and its components are sound before starting the building process – PACE has entered its integration and testing phase of development. PACE's primary sensor, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), is a highly advanced optical spectrometer that will be used to measure properties of light over portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. After passing its last critical design review in February 2020, PACE has entered its integration and testing phase of development.
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