ICESat First Light Release: A Global Perspective
Criss-crossing the world below at nearly 17,000 miles per hour, ICESat is measuring the Earth from space with unprecedented accuracy. ICESat measures the Earth by shining pulses of green and infrared light from one of its three onboard lasers. Although the major goal of ICESat's mission is to observe ice near the poles, the satellite takes measurements continuously around the entire globe, providing valuable information about our planet's clouds, oceans, mountains, forests, and fields.
Animation showing ICESat orbiting Earth
ICESat orbiting Earth
Slate image from video tape reads, 'ICESat First Light: A Global Perspective.'
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Visualization Studio
The Blue Marble Next Generation data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC) and NASA's Earth Observatory.
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Animators
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
- Alex Kekesi (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
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Scientists
- Christopher Shuman (NASA/GSFC)
- Jay Zwally (NASA/GSFC)
Release date
This page was originally published on Thursday, May 15, 2003.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:57 PM EDT.
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Datasets used in this visualization
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[RADARSAT-1: SAR]
ID: 87Credit: Additional credit goes to Canadian Space Agency, RADARSAT International Inc.
See all pages that use this dataset -
BMNG (Blue Marble: Next Generation) [Terra and Aqua: MODIS]
ID: 508Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).
This dataset can be found at: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/
See all pages that use this dataset
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.