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Neumann: Today we’re celebrating one year

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of ICESat-2. ICESat-2 launched September 15th

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last year, and over the last several weeks, we’ve seen all kinds of cool

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stuff on Photon Phriday. Such as melt ponds in Greenland. That’s something

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we didn’t know we were going to be able to do so well, and it opens up an entirely new

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part of science. We had a great pass over Crater Lake where we could see

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the walls of the former volcano, as well as the lake down in the middle, and that was

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awesome. We had a great pass over the holidays at Nantucket,

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off the coast of Massachusetts where we could see Cape Cod Bay

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and out to Nantucket Island. Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland, one of the fastest

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flowing glaciers in Greenland and a focus of study for NASA and others

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for the last several decades.
[music starts] So now that we’ve got all of those

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super hard, challenging measurements out of the way, we’re on the

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next most difficult measurement—warehouses. Today’s

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Photon Phriday is a very special warehouse. This happens to be the facility

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in Gilbert, Arizona, where Northrop Grumman has the cleanroom

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where the ATLAS instrument was mated to the spacecraft

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and became the ICESat-2 observatory. So in a lot of ways it’s like

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ICESat-2 found its home in the suburbs of Phoenix,

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Arizona. Thanks to all of you for following us along on

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Photon Phriday so far and happy birthday to ICESat-2.
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