Less than a month after it was put in orbit, the ocean-mapper Jason-2 has returned its first pictures to Earth. From an altitude of more than 1,300km, the spacecraft is now feeding back data covering nearly the entire globe.

Jason-2 is set to become the primary means of measuring the shape of the world’s oceans, taking readings with an accuracy of better than 4cm. The information will be crucial to our understanding of both sea level rise and changing ocean currents.

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