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September 15 (UPI) – NASA's newest ice measuring satellite was launched in orbit around the Earth's poles on Saturday morning aboard the last flight of the United Launch Alliance's Delta II rocket.
ICESat-2 was flown into space at 6:02 PDT from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, NASA said. The scheduled time was 5:46 but there was a 40 minute launch window.
The spacecraft has deployed its four solar panels and draws its energy, which means that it has managed to get into orbit. It is in orbit around the globe, pole to pole, at 17,069 mph at an average altitude of 290 miles.
The ground stations at Svalbard, Norway, acquired signals from the spacecraft.
The official name is Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2, NASA.
The only instrument of ICESat-2 is a laser system designed to measure the height of the Earth's surface – and most importantly, the height of sea ice. The height of the sea ice will help scientists measure its thickness.
"ICESat-2 will allow us to reach the thickness by measuring the freeboard of the pack ice – it is the height of the pack ice over the ocean," Tomi Neumann, deputy project researcher, told UPI. ICESat-2. "A larger freeboard is directly related to a great thickness of sea ice, since we know the relative density of water and ice in the oceans."
Since the satellite instrument can take six laser pulses – not one – at high speed, ICESat-2 will be able to observe changes in coverage and thickness of the ice of sea with unprecedented details. Scientists will be able to combine new ice data with measurements captured by various other satellites and instruments, helping scientists discover hidden relationships between ice and other oceanic and atmospheric phenomena – wind, current, temperature, precipitation and others.
In addition to measuring the minute changes in sea ice and on land, the ICE-Sat-2 will use its height-measuring lasers to track the sea level, the waves of the ocean and forest cover.
"Science often progresses when scientists discover new and more accurate ways of measuring things, and with ICESat-2, and that's exactly what we're going to do," said scientist Tom Wagner at UPI. "There will be a lot of unexpected science to come out of this mission."
The launch was the 153rd success of ULA's Delta II rocket – and its last because the ULA abandoned the model. ULA will have to rely even more heavily on its working rocket, the Atlas V.
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