So apologies for nearly a week of silence – I’ve been in training all week and busy at night so I’ve been barely online lately. Today’s news brings us the update that ICEsat-2 will be launching next month. This satellite will be used for mapping the earth, doing so by firing 10,000 laser bursts per second at the planet.
Firing 10,000 pulses per second at the blue planet, ATLAS will pick up “more than 250 times as many height measurements as its predecessor” (ICEsat, which ended its mission in 2010), said NASA Goddard project manager Doug McLennan.
I love sharing laser news, as the very idea of shooting lasers to do productive things makes me happy.