The Aquarius satellite is a planned NASA satellite mission to measure global sea surface salinity scheduled for launch on September 5, 2009. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an agency of the United States federal government, responsible for the nations public space program. ... Annual mean sea surface salinity for the World Ocean. ... September 5 is the 248th day of the year (249th in leap years). ... 2009 (MMIX) will be a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Aquarius is the latest, and only remaining, underwater laboratory dedicated to research, in a long line of underwater living environments that date from the 1960s.
Aquarius is especially valuable to researchers in the Florida Keys because an extensive amount of living coral reef resource lies in water too deep to be reached by conventional surface–based diving methods.
Aquarius is an 80 ton cylindrical chamber, 43 feet long and 9 feet in diameter, that is attached to a 116 ton baseplate.