A sea-ice scientist at the University of Tasmania is part of a new NASA satellite mission designed to deliver greater global coverage of land, sea and ice than all prior missions combined.
Dr Alex Fraser of the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership at UTAS is a collaborator in the program led by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego.
NASA announced at the beginning of the month that the Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer – EDGE – satellite program has been selected for continued development, and is planned for launch no earlier than 2030, when it’ll use new laser technology to scan the height of surface features in 120-metre-wide strips around the globe, providing better coverage and higher resolution than any previous satellite altimeter.
Dr Fraser said the EDGE satellite will be the first spaceborne laser altimeter system to monitor the impacts of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems and ice simultaneously.
“My work involves tracking how sea-ice coverage around Antarctica is changing over time under global heating, and this satellite will revolutionise that research.” she said.
