NASA satellite will monitor the vast frozen landscape of the Earth

NASA has successfully launched a new satellite to monitor and measure the frozen poles of the Earth. The ICESat-2 satellite will orbit the planet at an altitude of 290 miles, collecting data to estimate changes in the height of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

The onboard instrument, the advanced topographic laser altimetry system (ATLAS), will be able to monitor ice shifts up to four millimeters, allowing scientists to have a view without previous of this difficult and distant environment.

"With this mission, we continue to explore the remote polar regions of our planet and better understand how current changes in land ice cover at the poles and elsewhere will affect lives around the world, now and in the future," he said. Thomas Zurbuchen. Associate Administrator of NASA's Scientific Missions Directorate, said in a statement.

The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and, after 75 minutes, began transmitting signals to NASA. It currently circulates at a speed of 17,069 miles at the time, orbiting the globe from one pole to the other.

ICESat-2 will focus on the cryosphere – the areas of the planet covered with ice. This is one of the main goals of NASA's Earth Science research, as researchers seek to understand how these regions are changing as global temperatures rise.

By understanding the changes to polar ice caps, scientists will be able to better predict sea level rise based on melting rates. It will also help them understand how the loss of sea ice affects the ocean and the atmosphere, while controlling the mechanisms that cause the ice to shrink.

In addition to the cryosphere, the satellite will also measure other parts of the Earth, including temperate and tropical regions.

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The launch of ICESat-2. NASA / Bill Ingalls

"For us scientists, the most anticipated part of the mission begins when we turn on the laser and get our first data," said Thorsten Markus, scientist of the ICESat-2 project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "We are really looking forward to making this data available to the scientific community as quickly as possible so that we can begin to explore what ICESat-2 can tell us about our complex planet."

ICESat-2 measurements will be available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The ICESat-2 million is expected to last three years. However, the future of NASA's Earth Watch activities is currently being questioned because of the budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration. In May, Science The magazine announced that the agency's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), a carbon dioxide monitoring program around the world, had been abolished.

According to space.com, five other earth science missions have also been targeted and the total research budget has been reduced from $ 1.9 billion in 2017 to $ 1.78 billion in 2019.