VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — A NASA satellite designed to precisely measure changes in Earth’s ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice and vegetation was launched into polar orbit from California early Saturday. NASA Earth Science Division director Michael Freilich says that the mission in particular will advance knowledge of how the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica contribute to sea level rise. The melt from those ice sheets alone has raised global sea level by more than 1 millimeter (0.04 inch) a year recently, according to NASA. The mission is a successor to the original Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite that operated from 2003 to 2009. According to NASA, it will collect more than 250 times as many measurements as the first ICESat.

Source: National Post September 15, 2018 13:07 UTC