ICESat-2 Ground Track
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- Visualizations by:
- Kel Elkins
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- Produced by:
- Ryan Fitzgibbons
- View full credits
ICESat-2 (short for Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite -2), launched Sept. 15, 2018, uses lasers and a very precise detection instrument to measure the elevation of Earth’s surface. ICESat-2 is in a polar orbit which provides high coverage near the poles where ice elevations are changing relatively quickly. This visualization shows one complete orbit ground track.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
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Visualizer
- Kel Elkins (USRA) [Lead]
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Scientists
- Kaitlin Harbeck (SGT)
- Nathan T. Kurtz (NASA/GSFC)
- Thomas A. Neumann (NASA/GSFC)
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Producer
- Ryan Fitzgibbons (KBR Wyle Services, LLC) [Lead]
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Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Datasets used in this visualization
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ICESat-2 STK Ephemeris
ID: 984
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related Pages
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ID: 4913 Visualization
ICESat-2 Maps Subglacial Lakes in Antarctica
Read moreData visualization featuring precise map of Mercer and Conway subglacial lakes in West Antarctica. The visualization sequence starts with a view of the Americas and slowly zooms into the suture between the Mercer and Whillans ice streams. Surface-height anomaly data from NASA's ICESat-2 mission provide critical insight for the drain-fill cycles of subglacial lakes and aid in the discovery of two new water bodies within the same region. This data-driven visualization includes labels of ice formations close to the area of interest and repeats playback of the segment of the subglacial lakes surface-height anomalies. || SubglacialLakesCompositex2_4K60fps_0904_print.jpg (1024x576) [88.8 KB] || SubglacialLakesCompositex2_4K60fps_0904.png (3840x2160) [5.9 MB] || frames/1920x1080_16x9_60p/Compositex2/ (1920x1080) [256.0 KB] || SubglacialLakesCompositex2_HD60fps.mp4 (1920x1080) [58.4 MB] || SubglacialLakesCompositex2_1080p30.mp4 (1920x1080) [53.8 MB] || SubglacialLakesCompositex2_HD60fps.webm (1920x1080) [6.9 MB] || frames/3840x2160_16x9_60p/Compositex2_4K/ (3840x2160) [256.0 KB] || SubglacialLakesCompositex2_4K60fps.mp4 (3840x2160) [58.5 MB] || SubglacialLakesCompositex2_4K30fps.mp4 (3840x2160) [182.4 MB] ||
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ID: 13735 Produced Video
Photon Phriday: One Phull Orbit
Read moreFollow an entire orbit of the ICESat-2 mission as it measures the elevation of oceans, sea ice, mountains and islands around the Earth. This video shows the same orbit (ground reference track 1352) on two different dates (December 26, 2018, and September 24, 2019) to capture the clearest, least cloudy data examples. Each frame shows a different aspect of the orbit. The upper left frame is the entire photon cloud standardized on a global scale. The upper right frame shows selected photon cloud granules that sync with the global scale within a degree in order to show more spatial detail. In many cases, the zoomed-in photon clouds in this frame have been slowed down in order to show details clearly. The bottom right frame shows video examples of the terrain that correspond with where the orbit is. The bottom left terrain is the continuous orbit on a blue marble with labels for countries and other geographic features that represent where the orbit went over or very nearby. ||
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