NASA sends space a laser to study ice on Earth

NASA launched on Saturday its most advanced laser ever placed in orbit, the ICESat-2, a billion-dollar mission to reveal the extent of melting ice on a warming Earth.

The half-ton satellite was powered by a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg's US Air Force base in California at 06:02 (1302 GMT).
"Three, two, one, take off!", Said a NASA official on the television channel of the US space agency.

"Launch of ICESat-2 to explore the polar ice sheets of our ever-changing planet". 

The countdown has begun. The NASA must launch Saturday, September 15, a satellite of a half ton, the most advanced it has ever placed in orbit. ICESat-2 is to be powered by a Delta II rocket from the US Air Force Vandenberg Base in California. The shooting window, forty minutes, should open at 08:46 local (2:46 pm Paris time). We present you this new space mission to a billion dollars. This mission is "extraordinarily important for science," Richard Slonaker, NASA's ICESat-2 Program Manager, told reporters earlier.

For almost ten years, the agency no longer had an instrument in orbit to measure the thickness of areas covered by ice across the planet. ICESat-2 is intended to reveal the extent of melting ice (glaciers and pack ice) on a warming Earth. It takes over from a previous mission, ICESat, which was launched in 2003 and was completed in 2009. Thanks to it, scientists had learned that the pack ice was getting finer and the surfaces covered with ice disappeared from the coastal regions of Greenland and Antarctica.

The previous mission, ICESat, started in 2003 and ended in 2009. Thanks to it, scientists learned that the pack ice was becoming finer and that ice-covered surfaces were disappearing from the coastal regions of Greenland and Antarctica.
Since then, surveys have been conducted using an aircraft as part of a mission called Operation IceBridge overflight of the Arctic and Antarctic.

But an update is urgently needed.

With ICESat-2, the measurements will be "extremely precise", the thickness of a pencil, assured a member of the team, Kelly Brunt. "We are going to be able to look specifically at how the ice is changing over a single year," said Tom Wagner, a researcher with NASA's cryosphere (ice) program.

The increasing use of fossil fuels on Earth is leading to a steady rise in greenhouse gas emissions, which are considered to be the main drivers of climate change.

The average global temperature is increasing year after year, with the four warmest years of modern times recorded between 2014 and 2017.

The all-new ICESat-2 is expected to help scientists understand the extent of the contribution of ice melt to rising sea levels. This mission is "extraordinarily important for science," said Richard Slonaker, head of ICESat-2 at NASA. For nearly a decade, the agency no longer had an instrument in orbit to measure the thickness of ice-covered areas across the globe. Surveys were done by aircraft on a mission called Operation IceBridge that flew over the Arctic and Antarctic, but new data is needed.

Especially since global warming is going well, the four hottest years of modern times having been recorded between 2014 and 2017. The thickness of glaciers in the Arctic and Greenland is shrinking, increasing the phenomenon of rising levels of oceans that threaten hundreds of millions of people in coastal regions around the world.

The mission is supposed to last three years but the satellite has enough fuel to last for a decade if its officials decided to extend its life.