NASA's new satellite to study global warming by measuring ice sheet height
Image Credit: Twitter/@NASA
To study the effects of global warming on the ice sheet in Antarctica, Greenland and ice floating in the Arctic Ocean, NASA has launched ICESat-2, a satellite equipped with a laser to map the cryosphere. The satellite, which is 500 km above Earth, uses a technique called 'photon counting' to estimate the ice thickness, where 10,000 pulses are fired towards Earth, which then bounce back in about 3.3 milliseconds.