ICESat-2 beammultilaser

United Launch Services (ULS) has been awarded a contract by Nasa’s launch services programme to launch the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) 2 mission.

The mission is scheduled for lift-off in July 2016 from the space launch complex-2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Under the Nasa Launch Services (NLS) II contract, ULS will provide its Delta II launch vehicle, which will position the ICESat-2 spacecraft into an Earth polar orbit following lift-off.

"ICESat-2 will measure ice sheet mass elevation, sea ice free board, land topography and vegetation characteristics worldwide."

The cost of the launch is $96.6m, which includes payload processing, integrated services, telemetry, reimbursable and other launch support requirements.

Designed to operate for three years, ICESat-2 will measure ice sheet mass elevation, sea ice free board, land topography and vegetation characteristics worldwide; this is to understand their contribution to current and future sea-level rise and connections to the Earth system.

The subcontractors supporting United Launch Services include Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Alliant Techsystems, Utah and Aerojet of Sacramento.

ICESat-2 is the second-generation of the orbiting laser altimeter ICESat.

The ICESat mission was designed to provide data required to determine ice sheet mass balance and cloud property information for stratospheric clouds over polar areas.

It operated for seven years and was decommissioned from operations in August 2010.

Over the past decade, ULA’s Delta II has launched the Nasa’s critical science missions, including Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, Genesis, Phoenix Mars Lander, Stardust, and the twin GRAIL spacecraft.

United Launch Services, which operates as a subsidiary of United Launch Alliance, is based in Colorado, US, and provides launch services for aircraft and missiles.


Image: An illustration of ICESat-2 using micro-pulse multi-beam approach. Photo: courtesy of Nasa.

Defence Technology