In this September 14 NASA image, workers at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California prepare the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta II rocket, with NASA's Ice and Elevation Satellite on board. launch.(Photo: AFP / Getty Images)

A NASA satellite orbiting the Earth every 91 days will measure melting ice, perhaps providing clues to climate change, officials said.

The ice, cloud and land elevation satellite, ICESat-2, will direct six lasers on layers of ice and glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic to collect data on their evolution. The laser-sized tool of a smart car, known as the advanced topographic laser altimeter system, will be able to measure the height and slope of the ice.

"With sea ice, we have been able to measure the extent (or area) very well since about 1980 … but what we have not been able to measure is the thickness," said Tom Neumann, researcher assistant to NASA. The Guardian. "Thickness is a key part of the puzzle as thinner sea ice is more easily broken by storms."

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The $ 1 billion satellite was launched into space on September 15.

According to a study published in the journal Nature in June, global warming has caused the melting of more than 3,000 billion tons of Antarctic ice over the past quarter century and the tripling of ice loss in the last quarter of a century. during the last decade. A study in April said that if the world warms by 7.2 degrees this century, the Arctic will likely experience a three-month ice-free period every summer by 2050.

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"With this mission, we continue to explore the remote polar regions of our planet and better understand how the current changes in land ice cover at the poles and elsewhere will affect lives around the world, now and in the future" Associate Administrator of the Scientific Missions Directorate of NASA, said at the ICESat-2 launch.

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