WEBVTT FILE

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Neumann: We're at Vandenberg Air Force Base, we're about 20 minutes before the launch of ICESat-2.

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you might see the white light off in the
distance that's the Delta II rocket.

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Gardner: It kind of feels like an idea that was just always going to just stay an

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idea, but no it's it's real. It's sitting on top of the rocket. Neumann: You know, for me

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it's kind of surreal like you say. It's
been 10 years, it's hard to believe. It's

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like, we're really here? this is really about to happen?

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It's totally cool. [launch countdown]

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[music]

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[plane flying by]

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[music]

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VO: This is Dr. Tom Neumann.

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Over the years, his work has taken him to some pretty

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remote areas to study changes in the ice
regions of our planet,

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and his research, among many others, has defined the goals of the new NASA satellite,

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the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2.

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[launch commentary]
Neumann: The story of ICESat-2 really begins

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with ICESat-1. ICESat told us all kinds
of cool things about the ice sheet and

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about sea ice that we didn't really know
to ask.

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That data allowed us to measure

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elevation change of ice sheets in a way
that we hadn't been able to before, and

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showed that all the action on the ice
sheets--the places that we're really

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changing quickly--were around the edges.
So when we were thinking about what

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could we do better next time,
we knew that was one key component.

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VO: In addition to the edges of the ice sheets, ICESat-2 needed to measure a dimension

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of sea ice that remained elusive: its
thickness. To figure out how thick sea

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ice is, you can measure the height of ice
sticking out of the ocean, or freeboard,

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and compare it to the height of water
between the sea ice floes, called leads.

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Neumann: The problem is sea ice is really dynamic, and those cracks open and close, various

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places in the ice pack throughout the day, throughout the year, and what we need

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to do is have measurements of the ocean
whenever it's available, wherever it

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occurs in the sea ice pack.

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VO: To solve that problem, ICESat-2 was designed with a fast-

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pulsing laser instrument to take precise
near-continuous measurements across its

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three pairs of beams.

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For ten years, everything about the mission was

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designed to measure rapid changes in the
most rapidly changing part of the

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cryosphere, but it has to get into space
first.

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Neumann: But it's a huge, huge transition

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going from the ground to in space.

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We've spent better part of ten years,

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thousands of people have been involved, and actually seeing the rocket there on

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the pad with all of that work kind of
all put together and in one place, it's

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it's pretty amazing.

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And then getting up in the middle of the night to go watch

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the actual launch, it's sort of surreal in a way because

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you've put so much time into it for so long, and

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actually seeing it over there, it's like, whoa, you know, it's a--

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it's a big deal.

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[launch countdown on radio] Four, three--engine start--two, one, zero--liftoff

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[music, crowd cheering]

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[rocket sound, cheering, music]

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Good job, Dad.
Thanks, sweetie.

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That was awesome, totally cool.

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There it went. That was ATLAS, the last Delta II, heading on up.

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Neumann: So ATLAS has been turned on over the course of the first few weeks of the mission,

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really culminating for us with the laser.

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So this is our first look at sea ice data from ICESat-2, and it looks fantastic.

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The signal levels look great, we've got plenty of photons there.

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We're capturing ridges. We can clearly

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see the ocean. All sorts of cool stuff in
there, and this is just our first data.

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It's only going to get better from here
on out.

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VO: The data from ICESat-2 is well on

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its way into digging deeper into the
unknown dimensions of sea ice, ice sheets

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and glaciers. It will shed light on
changes in sea level and global weather

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patterns and once again find new things
about ice we didn't know to ask.

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[plane noise, music]

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So my heart is definitely racing, I don't know if anyone else's.

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This is the stuff nerds dream of.

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Slight chance the flight may see ICESat-2 in their center wind screen.

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Ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. It's coming.

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Five. Four. Three. Two.

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[music]