Latest ICESat Stories

WASHINGTON, May 26, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA has selected Fibertek of Herndon, Va., to design, develop, fabricate, test and deliver laser systems to be used for the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission scheduled to launch in 2016. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the ICESat-2 Project.(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The total estimated value of the cost-plus-award-fee contract is $26,083,242. The...

How do instruments end up on satellites orbiting the Earth?For many of them, long before they are ever launched into space, they are tested from NASA airplanes. One of the objectives of the NASA Airborne Science Program is to test new instruments in space-like environments. Testing future satellite instruments from airplanes is the next best thing to actually testing them in space.Over the past three weeks, a team from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., led by Bill Heaps has...

Researchers and flight crew arrived in Thule, Greenland, on Monday, March 14, for the start of NASA's 2011 Operation IceBridge, an airborne mission to study changes in Arctic polar ice. This year's plans include surveys of Canadian ice caps and expanded international collaboration.The state of Earth's polar ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice is an important indicator of climate change and plays a key role in regulating global climate. With IceBridge, NASA is pushing ahead with its commitment to...

WASHINGTON, March 15, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Researchers and flight crew arrived in Thule, Greenland, on Monday, March 14, for the start of NASA's 2011 Operation IceBridge, an airborne mission to study changes in Arctic polar ice. This year's plans include surveys of Canadian ice caps and expanded international collaboration. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The state of Earth's polar ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice is an important indicator of climate...

GREENBELT, Md., Sept. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Operation IceBridge - a NASA airborne mission to observe changes in Earth's rapidly changing polar land ice and sea ice - is soon to embark on its fourth field season in October. The mission is now paralleled by a campaign to bring data to researchers as quickly as possible and to accelerate the analysis of those changes and how they may affect people and climate systems. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) (Logo:...

University of Colorado at Boulder undergraduates, who have been helping to control five NASA satellites from campus, participated in the unusual decommissioning of a functioning satellite with a failed science payload in recent days, bringing the craft into Earth re-entry to burn up yesterday.The satellite, known as the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, orbited Earth for seven years, gathering valuable data on the polar regions and helping scientists develop a better...

UPDATE: NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office at Johnson Space Center, Houston, has reported that debris from the ICESat spacecraft fell to Earth in the Barents Sea on Monday, Aug. 30, at approximately 5 a.m. EDT.One of NASA's orbiting sentinels is expected to return to Earth in a few days. The agency's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation (ICESat) satellite completed a very productive scientific mission earlier this year. NASA lowered the satellite's orbit last month and then decommissioned the...

Using NASA satellite data, scientists have produced a first-of-its kind map that details the height of the world's forests. Although there are other local- and regional-scale forest canopy maps, the new map is the first that spans the entire globe based on one uniform method.The work -- based on data collected by NASA's ICESat, Terra, and Aqua satellites -- should help scientists build an inventory of how much carbon the world's forests store and how fast that carbon cycles through ecosystems...

WASHINGTON, July 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Scientists have produced a first-of-its kind map of the height of the world's forests by combining data from three NASA satellites. The map will help scientists build an inventory of how much carbon the world's forests store and how fast that carbon cycles through ecosystems and back into the atmosphere. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Maps of local and...

NASA-funded researchers monitoring Greenland's Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier report that a 7 square kilometer (2.7 square mile) section of the glacier broke up on July 6 and 7. The calving front "“ where the ice sheet meets the ocean "“ retreated nearly 1.5 kilometers (a mile) in one day and is now further inland than at any time previously observed. The chunk of lost ice is roughly one-eighth the size of Manhattan Island, New York.Research teams led by Ian Howat of the Byrd Polar Research...