Orbit Altitude: 705 km
Orbit Inclination: 98.2 degrees
Equator Crossing: 1:30 p.m. (south to north) and 1:30 a.m. (north to south)
Period: 98.8 minutes
Repeat Cycle: 16 days (233 revolutions)
Perigee: 699 km (434 mi)
Apogee: 706 km (438 mi)
Orbit Type: LEO > Low Earth Orbit > Polar Sun-Synchronous

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Aqua is a major international Earth Science satellite mission centered at NASA. Launched on May 4, 2002, the satellite has six different Earth-observing instruments on board and is named for the large ... amount of information being obtained about water in the Earth system from its stream of approximately 89 Gigabytes of data a day. The water variables being measured include almost all elements of the water cycle and involve water in its liquid, solid, and vapor forms. Additional variables being measured include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures.

Key Aqua Facts
Joint with Brazil and Japan
Dimensions: 2.7 m x 2.5 m x 6.5 m stowed; 4.8 m x 16.7 m x 8.0 m deployed
Mass: 2,934 kg (1,750 kg spacecraft, 1,082 kg instruments, 102 kg propellants)
Power: 4,600 W silicon cell array and a NiH2 battery
Average Data Rate: 89 Gbytes/day
Data Storage: 136-Gbit solid state recorder (SSR) for storage of up to two orbits of data
Data Relay Methods: Direct downlink from the SSR to polar ground stations; direct broadcast
Data Links: X-band
Telemetry: S-band

http://aqua.nasa.gov/
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/aqua/
http://aqua.nasa.gov/content/instruments