ICESat-2

ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2) is a NASA laser altimetry mission launched on 15 September 2018 aboard a Delta II rocket provided by United Launch Alliance.^[1] The satellite carries the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS), a photon-counting lidar operating at 532 nm that measures surface elevations across ice sheets, sea ice, forests, and oceans with centimetre-scale vertical precision.^[2]

ICESat-2 operates in a near-polar frozen orbit at approximately 496 km altitude and 92 degrees inclination, repeating its ground track every 91 days.^[2][3] The CEOS EO Handbook rounds the operational altitude to 500 km; eoPortal records and NASA GSFC documentation give 496 km as the engineering value.^[4][3][2] The mission was designed for a three-year operational life from launch, with a planned design-life endpoint of September 2021. The mission has since been extended; as of 2026-06-02 the extended mission remains active.^[5]

The spacecraft was built on the LEOStar-3 bus, manufactured by Northrop Grumman (then operating as Orbital ATK). ICESat-2 is operated by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and carries seven years of archived data accessible through NASA data services.^[5][3]