EnviSat Altimeter system: Near Real Time long-term monitoring

ESA declared the end of the EnviSat mission on 9
^th
May 2012, after 10 years of life (doubling the initial expected 5 years of operations). Monitoring of Near Real Time (NRT) data started in 2003 to assess the quality of measurement and calibration of the EnviSat Radar Altimeter instrument. Since then, NRT data has been stored to build a comprehensive database of altimeter parameters that can be now used not only to assess the instrument calibration and the processing data quality, but also as a starting point for defining specific performance objectives for NRT data for future altimeter missions.