OCEANX_2025

The OceanX 2025 campaign on the OceanXplorer presented a unique and compelling opportunity for NASA in collaboration with OceanX to collect critical in-water optical measurements and concentrations of carbon, phytoplankton pigments and community composition in the Indian Ocean and eastern Atlantic Ocean. This timing coincides with the second year of NASA's PACE mission, providing an exceptional opportunity for satellite data product validation. The ocean and coastal areas that OceanXplorer navigated through spanned low to high productivity waters, yield many opportunities for clear skies (enabling coincident in situ measurements with satellite observations), and diverse water types (clear blue ocean to algal-rich coastal ocean to more turbid nearshore) makes this opportunity ideal for validating PACE data with crucial in-situ data to ensure the accuracy and reliability of PACE measurements. The primary aim for NASA GSFC/OEL/FSG and PVST participation on the OceanXplorer field campaign in 2025 was to collect a suite of state-of-the-art ocean measurements for the validation of NASA's PACE satellite mission data products. Field measurements included ocean optical properties of ocean radiometry, absorption, attenuation, scattering, as well as phytoplankton pigments, organic carbon, and phytoplankton community composition, biomass and physiology as well as aerosol measurements.