Sep 4 2018

From The Space Library

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Current revision

MEDIA ADVISORY M18-130 NASA Television to Air Launch of Global Ice-Measuring Satellite

NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), a mission to measure the changing height of Earth's ice, is scheduled to launch Saturday, Sept. 15, with a 40-minute window opening at 8:46 a.m. EDT (5:46 a.m. PDT).

The spacecraft will lift off from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on the final launch of a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Coverage of prelaunch and launch activities begins Thursday, Sept. 13, on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

ICESat-2 will carry a single instrument, the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS), which will send 10,000 laser pulses a second to Earth’s surface and measure the height of ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice and vegetation by calculating the time it takes the pulses to return to the spacecraft. The precise and complete coverage afforded by ICESat-2 will enable researchers to track changes in land and sea ice with unparalleled detail, which will inform our understanding of what drives these changes.

NASA will host a prelaunch briefing at 4 p.m. Sept. 13 with:

• Tom Wagner, ICESat-2 program scientist at NASA Headquarters
• Doug McLennan, ICESat-2 project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
• Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, ATLAS instrument project manager at Goddard
• Tom Neumann, ICESat-2 deputy project scientist at Goddard
• Lori Magruder, ICESat-2 science definition team lead at the University of Texas at Austin
• Helen Fricker, ICESat-2 science definition team member at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
• Bill Barnhart, ICESat-2 program manager at Northrop Grumman
• Tim Dunn, launch director at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
• Scott Messer, program manager for NASA Programs at United Launch Alliance
• 1st Lt. Daniel Smith, launch weather officer with the 30th Space Wing at Vandenberg

Media and the public may ask questions during the briefing using #askNASA.

Launch coverage begins at 8:10 a.m. Sept. 15 with a weather update and live interviews leading up to the launch window opening at 8:46 a.m.

MEDIA ADVISORY M18-132 NASA to Host Live Chat on Successful Mission to Asteroid Belt

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will host a live-streamed Science Chat at 2 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 7, during which experts will talk about the role of the agency’s Dawn spacecraft in studying the beginning of our solar system, and the approaching end of its 11-year mission.

The event will air live on NASA Television, Facebook Live, Ustream, YouTube and the agency's website.

Participants include:

• Jim Green, NASA chief scientist
• Carol Raymond, Dawn principal investigator at JPL
• Marc Rayman, Dawn mission director and chief engineer at JPL

Media who would like to ask questions during the event must provide their name and affiliation to Gretchen McCartney by email at gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov or by phone at 818-393-6215 or 818-287-4115.

The public can ask questions on Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA or in the comment section of the JPL Facebook page.

NASA launched Dawn in 2007 to learn more about the beginning of the solar system. During its mission, the spacecraft studied the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, celestial bodies believed to have formed early in the history of the solar system.

The mission aided scientists in characterizing the early solar system and the processes that dominated its formation. Dawn is the only spacecraft to orbit two deep-space destinations, a feat enabled by the efficiency of the spacecraft’s ion propulsion system.