[music]
Neumann: Today we’re celebrating one year
of ICESat-2. ICESat-2 launched September 15th
last year, and over the last several weeks, we’ve seen all kinds of cool
stuff on Photon Phriday. Such as melt ponds in Greenland. That’s something
we didn’t know we were going to be able to do so well, and it opens up an entirely new
part of science. We had a great pass over Crater Lake where we could see
the walls of the former volcano, as well as the lake down in the middle, and that was
awesome. We had a great pass over the holidays at Nantucket,
off the coast of Massachusetts where we could see Cape Cod Bay
and out to Nantucket Island. Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland, one of the fastest
flowing glaciers in Greenland and a focus of study for NASA and others
for the last several decades. [music starts] So now that we’ve got all of those
super hard, challenging measurements out of the way, we’re on the
next most difficult measurement—warehouses. Today’s
Photon Phriday is a very special warehouse. This happens to be the facility
in Gilbert, Arizona, where Northrop Grumman has the cleanroom
where the ATLAS instrument was mated to the spacecraft
and became the ICESat-2 observatory. So in a lot of ways it’s like
ICESat-2 found its home in the suburbs of Phoenix,
Arizona. Thanks to all of you for following us along on
Photon Phriday so far and happy birthday to ICESat-2. [music]