A Slice of Ice

ICESat-2 measuring the height of ice from space Learn how ICESat-2 will give scientists a global view of Earth s laser provides data on the height of ice on land and sea, giving scientists data to calculate the ice’s thickness and volume. Height data will also be collected on forests across the world, which will help researchers estimate global vegetation.

ICESat-2 orbiting Earth: starting with global view building up ground track, then riding the satellite view, then back to a global view with full ground track ICESat-2 is a spacecraft designed to accurately measure land and ice elevations on Earth. By comparing observations from different times, scientists will be able to study changes in elevations. ICESat-2 will be in a polar orbit which will provide high coverage near the poles where ice elevations are changing relatively quickly. This visualization shows ICESat-2 s global coverage which repeats about once every 90 days.The ATLAS lidar on ICESat-2 uses 3 pairs of laser beams to measure the earth’s elevation and elevation change. As a global mission, ICESat-2 will collect data over the entire globe, however the ATLAS instrument is optimized to measure land ice and sea ice elevation in the polar regions.For more information on ICESat-2 click here. ICESat-2 orbit with ground track (short version)