ICESat-2 Adds the Third Dimension to Earth

ICESat-2 will provide scientists with height measurements that create a global portrait of Earth's third dimension, gathering data that can precisely track changes of terrain including glaciers, sea ice, forests and more. The single instrument on ICESat-2 is ATLAS, the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System, will measure melting ice sheets and investigate how this effects sea level rise, investigate changes in the mass of ice sheets and glaciers, estimate and study sea ice thickness, and measure the height of vegetation in forests and other ecosystems worldwide. "Eternal Circle," Laurent Dury, Koka Media SACEM Complete transcript available.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio

Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

[cyanideghost]

Love Science, Technology and Engineering!

[patomalley]

Brilliant. How far we have come since the first satellite went into space. 1957 with Sputnik 1 offering a few bleeps. Then this amazing advancement started. Well done NASA. Keep up the good work.

[BugRib]

Wonderful! Keep up the good work, NASA.

I wish more people understood how much this one government agency contributes to science and human knowledge in general!

P.S. Climate change is real, and don’t let any government bureaucrats tell you otherwise!

[veggiegiant]

INCREDIBLE - Thank you for sharing this video!

[SnowTiger]

It doesn't appear to be a very wide beam, requiring many orbits to cover the entire surface of Earth.
I wonder how long before it travels over a section repeatedly (i.e. over the same glacier providing the ability to see the rate of its disappearance) ?

[elsaalvarez]

Wooow¡ Esta es una maravilla¡ Muchas Felicidades por esta tecnología que permite ver en tercera dimensión ¡ =[]

[Mecenarie]

How can their instrument measure photons emitted down to Earth and back to the satellite within a billionth of a second?
The altitude would be 490+ Kilometers, so photon would have to fly 980+ Km (there and back) to the satellite once emitted right? Shouldn't that make the latency of roughly 3 ms? That is not a billionth of a second....

[OrtizKlown]

Then the question is, Will Dr.Evil use it, strapped to a meteor, to melt the polar icecaps unless he gets a googilian dollars? Stay tuned kids!