Satellite to Detect Ice Sheet Changes Launched
A $282-million satellite that NASA is deploying to measure changes in the ice sheets that blanket the Earth’s poles was carried into orbit after being delayed nearly a month.
A Boeing Delta II rocket ferrying the Ice Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, and a smaller, secondary satellite achieved liftoff at 4:45 p.m. Sunday, said a Boeing spokesman, Robert Villanueva, from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast.
“Our mission managers are reporting that everything is going OK,” Villanueva said an hour into the rocket flight that would place the two payloads in polar orbits 375 and 350 miles above the Earth.
The 661-pound satellite, the larger of the two, was designed to measure the ice sheets blanketing Greenland and Antarctica, so scientists will be able to determine whether global sea levels are rising or falling, NASA officials said.
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