The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment-Continuity mission will extend a decades-long record of following shifting water masses using gravity measurements.
NASA and the German Space Agency at DLR (German Aerospace Center) have agreed to jointly build, launch, and operate a pair of spacecraft that will yield insights into how Earth's water, ice, and land masses are shifting by measuring monthly changes in the planet's gravity field. Tracking large-scale mass changes - showing when and where water moves within and between the atmosphere, oceans, underground aquifers, and ice sheets - provides a view into Earth's water cycle, including changes in response to drivers like climate change.
With the international agreement signed in late 2023, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment-Continuity (GRACE-C) mission will extend a nearly 25-year legacy that began with the 2002 launch of the GRACE
