NASA’s ICESat-2 has hit an incredible milestone: 2 trillion laser shots fired from orbit! This…
Browsing: ICESat-2
ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2) is a NASA mission launched in September 2018 as a follow-up to the original ICESat mission, which operated from 2003 to 2009. The primary goal of ICESat-2 is to monitor changes in the ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice of Earth’s polar regions and other areas, providing precise measurements of ice elevation and documenting how it changes over time. The satellite employs a sophisticated laser altimeter system called ATLAS (Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System), which uses laser pulses to measure the distance from the satellite to the Earth’s surface, enabling it to detect changes in ice elevation with high accuracy. This data is crucial for understanding and predicting the impacts of climate change, particularly rising sea levels. ICESat-2 also measures the height of vegetation in forests and other ecosystems around the globe, contributing to broader environmental monitoring and studies.
Following the strongest solar storm in twenty years, NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite was put into a…
Daichi Fujii captured rare footage of NASA’s ICESat-2 green laser beams over Mount Fuji, caused…
Melt Ponds, Summer Ice, and More: Space Laser Measures Changing Earth Since 2003, Arctic sea…
In temperatures that can drop below -20 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 degrees Celsius), along a route…