ODYSEA: a satellite mission to advance knowledge of ocean dynamics and air-sea interaction

Ocean-surface vector winds, currents, and their interaction play critical roles in shaping many aspects of the Earth’s environment (e.g., weather, climate, marine ecosystems, and ocean health), affecting human safety and wellbeing both on land and at sea. However, there are significant capability gaps in observing winds, currents, and their interaction. At present, global gridded products of surface currents have coarse (~150 km) feature resolutions and rely on theoretical assumptions that break down near the equator. Moreover, there is no satellite that provides simultaneous wind-current measurements that are important for studying wind-current coupling and its impact on weather and climate. The “Ocean DYnamics and Surface Exchange with the Atmosphere” (ODYSEA) satellite mission concept is designed to alleviate these capability gaps. ODYSEA, proposed to NASA’s Earth System Explorers program in mid-2023, aims to provide the first-ever global measurements of total surface currents and simultaneous winds with 5-km data postings and near-daily coverage of the global ocean. ODYSEA builds on NASA’s heritage of scatterometry and the success of the airborne Doppler scatterometer flown as part of the Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE), NASA’s Earth Venture Suborbital-3 (EVS-3) mission. ODYSEA also leverages strong domestic and international partnerships. Here we present ODYSEA’s objectives, anticipated capabilities, and expected contributions to advance the understanding of surface current dynamics and air-sea interaction.