Neumann: We're at Vandenberg Air Force Base, we're about 20 minutes before the launch of ICESat-2.
you might see the white light off in the distance that's the Delta II rocket.
Gardner: It kind of feels like an idea that was just always going to just stay an
idea, but no it's it's real. It's sitting on top of the rocket. Neumann: You know, for me
it's kind of surreal like you say. It's been 10 years, it's hard to believe. It's
like, we're really here? this is really about to happen?
It's totally cool. [launch countdown]
[music]
[plane flying by]
[music]
VO: This is Dr. Tom Neumann.
Over the years, his work has taken him to some pretty
remote areas to study changes in the ice regions of our planet,
and his research, among many others, has defined the goals of the new NASA satellite,
the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2.
[launch commentary] Neumann: The story of ICESat-2 really begins
with ICESat-1. ICESat told us all kinds of cool things about the ice sheet and
about sea ice that we didn't really know to ask.
That data allowed us to measure
elevation change of ice sheets in a way that we hadn't been able to before, and
showed that all the action on the ice sheets--the places that we're really
changing quickly--were around the edges. So when we were thinking about what
could we do better next time, we knew that was one key component.
VO: In addition to the edges of the ice sheets, ICESat-2 needed to measure a dimension
of sea ice that remained elusive: its thickness. To figure out how thick sea
ice is, you can measure the height of ice sticking out of the ocean, or freeboard,
and compare it to the height of water between the sea ice floes, called leads.
Neumann: The problem is sea ice is really dynamic, and those cracks open and close, various
places in the ice pack throughout the day, throughout the year, and what we need
to do is have measurements of the ocean whenever it's available, wherever it
occurs in the sea ice pack.
VO: To solve that problem, ICESat-2 was designed with a fast-
pulsing laser instrument to take precise near-continuous measurements across its
three pairs of beams.
For ten years, everything about the mission was
designed to measure rapid changes in the most rapidly changing part of the
cryosphere, but it has to get into space first.
Neumann: But it's a huge, huge transition
going from the ground to in space.
We've spent better part of ten years,
thousands of people have been involved, and actually seeing the rocket there on
the pad with all of that work kind of all put together and in one place, it's
it's pretty amazing.
And then getting up in the middle of the night to go watch
the actual launch, it's sort of surreal in a way because
you've put so much time into it for so long, and
actually seeing it over there, it's like, whoa, you know, it's a--
it's a big deal.
[launch countdown on radio] Four, three--engine start--two, one, zero--liftoff
[music, crowd cheering]
[rocket sound, cheering, music]
Good job, Dad. Thanks, sweetie.
That was awesome, totally cool.
There it went. That was ATLAS, the last Delta II, heading on up.
Neumann: So ATLAS has been turned on over the course of the first few weeks of the mission,
really culminating for us with the laser.
So this is our first look at sea ice data from ICESat-2, and it looks fantastic.
The signal levels look great, we've got plenty of photons there.
We're capturing ridges. We can clearly
see the ocean. All sorts of cool stuff in there, and this is just our first data.
It's only going to get better from here on out.
VO: The data from ICESat-2 is well on
its way into digging deeper into the unknown dimensions of sea ice, ice sheets
and glaciers. It will shed light on changes in sea level and global weather
patterns and once again find new things about ice we didn't know to ask.
[plane noise, music]
So my heart is definitely racing, I don't know if anyone else's.
This is the stuff nerds dream of.
Slight chance the flight may see ICESat-2 in their center wind screen.
Ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. It's coming.
Five. Four. Three. Two.
[music]