Overview of the ICESat Mission

The Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) on the NASA Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) has provided a view of the Earth in three dimensions with unprecedented accuracy. Although the primary objectives focus on polar ice sheet mass balance, the GLAS measurements, distributed in 15 science data products, have interdisciplinary application to land topography, hydrology, vegetation canopy heights, cloud heights and atmospheric aerosol distributions. Early laser life issues have been mitigated with the adoption of 33‐day operation periods, three times per year, designed to document intra‐ and inter‐annual polar ice changes in accordance with mission requirements. A variety of…