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The satellite with a three-year mission is scheduled to launch at 8:46 am EDT on Sept. 15, with the launch on board a Satellite Delta II rocket from Space Launch Complex-2 (SLC-2). Tuesday.
ICESat-2 is NASA's most advanced laser instrument – the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS).
It measures the height by accurately measuring how long it takes for individual photons of a laser's light to exit the satellite, bounce off the Earth and return to the satellite.
The satellite will provide critical observations on how ice caps, glaciers and sea ice are changing, which helps to better understand the impact of these changes on the populations where they live, NASA said.
The ICESat-2 orbit will make 1,387 unique terrain tracks around the Earth in 91 days, then start the same pattern again in the beginning.
While the first ICESat satellite (2003-09) measured ice with a single laser beam, ICESat-2 divides its laser light into six beams, allowing better coverage of more soil (or ice).
The beam layout in three pairs will also allow scientists to assess the slope of the surface they measure, NASA said.
In addition, the ICESat-2 system will zoom over the planet at 7 km per second (4.3 miles per second), completing an orbit around the Earth in 90 minutes. Orbits have been defined to converge at latitude lines of 88 degrees around the poles, in order to concentrate data coverage in the region where scientists expect to see the most changes.
All these height measurements result from the timing of individual laser photons on their 600-mile round-trip between the satellite and the Earth's surface – a trip estimated at 800 picoseconds, NASA said.
–IANS
rt / anp / mr
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