The GRACE Follow-On mission, the successor to the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, launched into space from Vandenberg Airforce Base in California aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 5.47am 23 May 2018.

Prof Daniel shaddock’s team from ANU Centre for Gravitational Physics have played a significant role in designing new satellites that are part of a joint NASA and German Space Agency mission launched into space to study changes in water levels on Earth and other aspects of climate change.

Using the technology of Laser Ranging Interferometry, Grace follow-on can pick up changes in the separation of the spacecraft by ten nanometres, about the diameter of a virus.

Read our detailed announcement