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NASA will soon activate "the most advanced laser instrument of its kind" to study the evolution of polar ice on Earth.
The Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS), extremely accurate, is the main feature of the Ice, Cloud and Earth Elevation Satellite (ICESat-2) that was successfully launched on September 15 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket was launched with NASA ICESat-2 on September 15, 2018, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. 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."
After a successful week along its planned orbit, NASA tweeted Friday, ICESat2, worth $ 1 billion, "looks great" and it will turn on ATLAS in about a week.
Once the laser is on, it will emit six beams of green light on the ice covering Greenland and Antarctic and measure the time it takes for the pulses to bounce off.
The technology captures 60,000 measurements per second and estimates the change in annual height of the ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica to less than four millimeters, the width of a pencil, according to NASA.
The ICESat-2 repeats its orbit around the Earth every 91 days so that scientists can track the evolution of ice height over the four seasons.
The data collected will help scientists get a better idea of the melting of the Earth's ice and improve predictions of sea level rise.
"We can better parameterize these processes and incorporate them into models so that our models are more accurate and predict future sea level scenarios, so that we can then send this information to planners to prepare for the future," Helen Fricker The Scripps Oceanographic Institution, which has helped NASA develop the scientific objectives of the ICESat-2 mission, told Here & Now.
"As the climate gets warmer," continued Fricker, "we are seeing changes in sea level – sea level is rising – but the ultimate goal is to know how much ice we will lose and how fast we will lose it. lose? "
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