Credit: NASA s Goddard Space Flight Center
Before its September 2018 launch, the ICESat-2 mission team was focused on making sure the satellite met its science requirements, said Tom Neumann, the mission’s project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. And it has, by precisely measuring the height of the ice sheets at Earth’s poles, of sea ice floes above the ocean waters, and of forest canopies.
The satellite’s continuous coverage around the globe, with height measurements of Earth’s surface taken every 2.3 feet (70 centimeters) along its ground path, has made ICESat-2 datasets appealing to those studying rivers, coastal regions, forests and more, he said.