Successful launch for ESA’s CryoSat-2 ice satellite
From the European Space Agency:
8 April 2010
ESA PR 07-2010. Europe’s first mission dedicated to studying the Earth’s ice was launched today from Kazakhstan. From its polar orbit, CryoSat-2 will send back data leading to new insights into how ice is responding to climate change and the role it plays in our ‘Earth system’.
The CryoSat-2 satellite was launched at 15:57 CEST (13:57 UTC) on a Dnepr rocket provided by the International Space Company Kosmotras from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The signal confirming that it had separated from the launcher came 17 minutes later from the Malindi ground station in Kenya.
CryoSat-2 replaces the original CryoSat satellite that was lost in 2005 owing to a launch failure. The mission objectives, however, remain the same: to measure changes in the thickness of the vast ice sheets that overlie Antarctica and Greenland, as well as variations in the thickness of the relatively thin ice floating in the polar oceans.
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Successful launch for ESA’s CryoSat-2 ice mission
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“We know from our radar satellites that sea ice extent is diminishing, but there is still an urgent need to understand how the volume of ice is changing,” said Volker Liebig, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes. “To make these calculations, scientists also need information on ice thickness, which is exactly what our new CryoSat satellite will provide. We are now very much looking forward to receiving the first data from the mission.”
The launch of CryoSat-2 marks a significant achievement for ESA’s Earth observation programme and brings to three the number of its Earth Explorer satellites placed in orbit, all having been launched within a little over 12 months. CryoSat-2 follows on from the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission, launched in March 2009, and the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, launched last November.
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CryoSat measuring sea ice
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Earth Explorers are launched in direct response to issues identified by the scientific community and aim to improve our understanding of how the Earth system works and the effect that human activity is having on natural processes.
In response to this need, CryoSat-2 is carrying the first radar altimeter of its kind to overcome the difficulties of measuring icy surfaces. Its primary payload, the sophisticated SAR/Interferometric Radar Altimeter (SIRAL), was developed by Thales Alenia Space to measure the thickness of ice floating in the oceans and monitor changes in the ice sheets on land, particularly around the edges where icebergs are calved.
The CryoSat-2 satellite was built by a consortium led by EADS Astrium. The satellite is in a polar orbit, reaching latitudes of 88°. This is closer to the poles than earlier Earth observation satellites, resulting in an additional area of about 4.6 million sq km being covered. This extra coverage amounts to an area larger than all 27 European Union member states put together. The combination of the technology onboard and a polar orbit will provide evidence to further our understanding of the relationship between ice and climate.
Now that CryoSat-2 is safely in orbit, the Mission Control Team at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany is busy with the critical ‘Launch and Early Operations Phase’.
Amateur Takes Photos From Edge of Space… NASA Wants to Know How
Lead article on today’s page at astromart.com
Apparently, Robert Harrison of Highburton, New Yorkshire, attained an altitude of 35 Mi. with a camera in a box, sporting a parachute,tracking device and his propulsion system was a helium balloon that pops at that altitude.
This isn’t the 1st time amatuers have contributed, and it shouldn’t be the last.
Congress may waffle, Hubble may fail, but we will still be pulling for you, NASA, to keep doing the things that push the envelope of space discovery.
We just need you refind your true love: going where no man has gone before.
That means dropping the loudspeaker types.
Buzz Aldrin just got voted off Dancing with the Stars last night. He’s a Space Pioneer and Explorer. You need Buzz and Buzz needs you. You should have seen the gleam in his eye when he talked about why he did the dancing contest. Congress needs to get an earful of Buzz. He’ll set ’em straight on what ‘can do’ is all about.
Amateur Takes Photos From Edge of Space… NASA Wants to Know How
–It’s really quite simple…can do.
Assume the measurements are accurate and the data will be made public in a timely manner. Comparison of two or three years of measurements will yield an ice trend indicating either slight thinning or slight thickening.
If it is thinning, they will say that is due to global warming. They will project that rate ahead and tell us the seas will be ice-free in 50 years. QED.
If it is thickening, they will say that is because global warming reduced it so much in the 2007 minimum that it had no where to go but up. They will say that the thickening is a short-term effect. Then they will predict a rapid turn-around and tell us the seas will be ice-free in 55 years. QED.
That’s true if you want an equatorial based orbit, but it doesn’t help at all if you want a polar orbit. For that, you have to impose all of the velocity yourself, with no assistance from the spin of the Earth.
brc (18:42:28) :
Most ESA launches are from Corou in Guayana which is close to the Equator (much closer than Cape Canaveral as a matter of fact). CryoSat however was launched by a Russo/Ukrainian Dniepr launcher, a converted SS-18 missile, from the Baikonur launch center. This by the way is about as far south as you could conveniently get in the old Soviet Union, and still have plentiful uninhabited land to the east for launch debris to land on.
I think most of what they will find is how much the thickness varies, due to wind effects, and be able to see the wind cramming loose flows into compact but smaller clumps, that currently really messes with the volume to surface ratio even on short time scales.
(better plan future extravaganzas by Catlin and GE? or to better guide rescue efforts.)
The Independent’s version of this is that the increasing polar ice is, in fact, melting…
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“Satellite blasts off on mission to map the Earth’s melting ice…
“…Scientists have been observing significant changes in the polar regions in recent years which are generally ascribed to the warming climate, and in September 2007 the extent of summer ice cover in the Arctic Ocean reached a record low level.
“…If the land-based Greenland ice sheet were to melt completely, it would mean a global sea-level rise of 21 feet, while if all of the Earth’s polar ice and glaciers were to melt, sea levels could rise by more than 10 times that amount…”
…etc.
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Read the whole article and register to log in and comment if you want here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/satellite-blasts-off-on-mission-to-map-the-earths-melting-ice-1939864.html
This is good news. As with everything, we need to ignore the spin of “worse than we thought” that will undoubtedly occur, and look at the evidence it presents.
Mission unaccomplished,sir!
said Volker Liebig, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes. “To make these calculations, scientists also need information on ice thickness, which is exactly what our new CryoSat satellite will provide.
I do worry about the absolute certainty this guy has in the equipment. I wouldn’t be worried tho about its accuracy per se, it’s what happens to the “raw” data when it reaches the bowels of the EU mission control centre, for its usual adjustment & refining! Wouldn’t it have been cheaper for we Euro-taxpayers to measure the ice thickness like the Germans did last year with a torpedo radar towed behind a plane whilst the CATLIN crew struggled on the ice pack below?
Then again, this could be just the usual Peoples Democratic Republic of the EU response to give the “finger” to good ol USA in an effort to tell you colonials that “we’re just as clever as you”! The only thing they are better at I’m afraid to say is to talk about things, rather than actually do them! Tsunami & Haiti to name two, when they very effectively organised a conference on both incidents, but did very little else.
@Steve Goddard (12:00:39) :
“Their mission statement defines a pre-determined agenda and assumptions.”
Meh. The data is what the data is. As long as they make all the data freely available to all, then they get to characterize that data just like everyone else does and I’m fine with that.
I have no interest in stifling opposing view points to my own. I just get riled when opposing viewpoints try to stifle mine by restricting access to the data that will allow a level playing field for debate.
“Their mission statement defines a pre-determined agenda and assumptions.”
I am really disappointed in the comments so far. It appears the commentators are going overboard in their skepticism. To be sure, the mission statement appears to suggest they are certain that data will confirm their beliefs in AGW. However, they have not started collecting and reporting the data. Let’s wait for that before he start condemning the whole mission.
Consider the alternative: what if they discover and report that Arctic ice is in fact thickening and expanding — as some scientists are projecting for the neart term. Won’t that be another “nail in the coffin” for AGW.
I think experts need to follow the reports from the mission to ensure their accuracy and absence of spin. As I noted in a previous comment, the greatest value of blogs like WUWT is that it provides “peer review” when the normal peer review process has been completely corrupted.
In short, let’s police the reports that come out of this mission to ensure that the press releases report the findings accurately.
Mustafa Mohatarem (06:18:34) :
I’m sorry Mustafa, but many of us are guided by experience, and our experience with so called climate research is that when it is good news it is weather, and when it is bad news it is climate, and when there is no news, they make it up to be bad.
Look at the investigations of Phil Jones and Michale Mann. I said they were setting them up for a whitewash even before the investigations began and I was right. I have been right so often with this climate change nonsense that I no longer care what they say because I don’t believe any of it. And if the government subsidizes it it is bad for us. My attitude about this extends to all government funded science. It is corrupt to the core.
I wish it were different, but I haven’t seen anything to prove me wrong.