Comparing ISS and ICESat-2 Coverage Across the Earth

  • Released Friday, July 18, 2025
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This visualization shows the ISS orbiting Earth, with a ground track marking its path. A white band highlights the latitude limits of the ISS orbit. As the view shifts toward the North Pole, we see the ISS misses the polar regions. ICESat-2’s orbit and ground track then appear, along with a blue band showing its greater polar coverage.

These visualizations explore the orbits of the International Space Station (ISS) and the ICESat-2 satellite. The ISS reaches a maximum latitude of approximately ±51.6°, while ICESat-2 extends to about ±88°, allowing it to observe much closer to the poles.

This visualization shows the ISS orbiting Earth, with a ground track marking its path. A white band highlights the latitude limits of the ISS orbit. As the view shifts toward the North Pole, we see the ISS misses the polar regions. ICESat-2’s orbit and ground track then appear, along with a blue band showing its greater polar coverage. This version is a vertical video format.

An interactive view of the orbits of the ISS and ICESat-2 satellites

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Missions

This page is related to the following missions:

Datasets used

Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.

This page was originally published on Friday, July 18, 2025.
This page was last updated on Monday, April 28, 2025 at 6:16 PM EDT.