Jason and the Argonauts return for new mission
It is one of Greek mythology's most popular tales: a young warrior named Jason handpicks a crew of fearless men for his ship, The Argo, and sets sail in search of the Golden Fleece. Centuries later, they have returned, this time to help protect another cherished prize - the environment.
In 2000, aerologists and oceanographers from the United States and some other countries, launched a major quest to revolutionize the way scientists forecast climate change. Project Argo involves satellite-tracked floats that measure the temperature and salinity of the upper 2,000 m of an ocean, generating profiles of the world's seas never before thought possible. Jason was the name given to the assisting NASA satellite launched in 2001.
Together once again, Jason and Argo have proved a formidable team, with their combined data being used by the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE) to develop detailed tests on climate change.
