NASA has launched a giant laser into space to monitor earth’s ice cover from 300 miles above the planet’s surface.
A satellite has been designed to precisely measures changes in the planet’s ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice and vegetation.
A Delta 2 rocket carrying ICE Sat-2 lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California this morning and headed over the Pacific Ocean.
Built by Northrop Grumman, the rocket carries 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.
The laser is designed to fire 10,000 times per second, divided into six beams of hundreds of trillions of photons. The round trip is timed to a billionth of a second.
NASA Earth Science Division director Michael Freilich said the mission in will advance knowledge of how the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica contribute to sea level rise.
The melt from those ice sheets alone has raised global sea level by more than 1 millimeter (0.04 inch) 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 in NASA’s Operation IceBridge.
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, flood and drought planning and wildfire behavior, among other uses.
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The launch was the last for a Delta 2 rocket, United Launch Alliance said.
The first Delta 2 lifted off on Feb. 14, 1989, and since then it has been the launch vehicle for Global Positioning System orbiters, Earth observing and commercial satellites, and interplanetary missions including the twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.
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News Pictures NASA launches giant laser into space to monitor Earth’s ice cover from 300miles above the planet
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