New satellite to keep tabs on Earth’s melting ice sheets

CALIFORNIA: A Nasa satellite designed to measure precisely changes in the Earth’s ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice and vegetation has been launched into polar orbit from California.

A Delta 2 rocket carrying the ICESat2 lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on Saturday and headed over the Pacific Ocean.

Nasa earth science division director Michael Freilich said the mission would advance knowledge of how the ice sheets of Greenland and the Antarctic contributed to sea level rise.

The melt from those ice sheets alone has raised global sea level by more than 1mm a year recently, according to Nasa.

The mission is a successor to the original Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite that operated from 2003 to 2009.

Measurements continued since then with airborne instruments.

ICESat2 carries a single instrument, a laser altimeter that measures height by determining how long it takes photons to travel from the spacecraft to Earth and back.

According to Nasa, it will collect more than 250 times as many measurements as the first ICESat.

In addition to ice, the satellite’s other measurements, such as the tops of trees, snow and river heights, may help with research into the amount of carbon stored in forests, and also with flood and drought planning and wildfire behaviour, among other uses. — AP