For a satellite with ice in its name, and measuring ice as its mission, NASA’s ICESat-2 is also getting a lot of attention from scientists who have warmer subjects in mind.
At this month’s Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), researchers are highlighting how the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite 2 is helping to understand aspects of our home planet far beyond what it was intended to do.
When ICESat-2 sent back its first measurements on the heights of Earth’s surface in early 2019 the ICESat-2 science team lead, Lori Magruder of the University of Texas, recalls her colleague and fellow science team member Amy Neuenschwander banging on their shared office wall for her to come look at one of the first data sets: A profile of the Mexico coastline showed mountains and trees as expected, but then also continued to the ocean, where both waves at the surface as well as the seafloor below were easily distinguishable. Around the same time, Helen Fricker of Scripps Institution of Oceanography zeroed in on her favorite swath of Antarctic ice – the Amery Ice Shelf – not to look at the height of the frozen ice itself, but to see if meltwater pooling on the surface of the ice shelf was visible from space (it was).
“It’s amazing what you can see with this data, and it just keeps sparking people's curiousity,” Magruder said.
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Image via NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
