TOPEX/Poseidon was launched August 10, 1992 from the ESA launch facility at Kourou, French Guiana, aboard an Ariane launch vehicle. TOPEX/Poseidon data has revolutionized the way the global ocean is studied. For the first time, the seasonal cycle and other temporal variabilities of the ocean have been determined globally with high accuracy, yielding fundamentally important information for testing ocean circulation models.

Credits - NASA