NASA's Ready to Study Cool Ice, Hot Plasma and Ocean Winds

Artistic image of CHIPS in Orbit

The month of December will see the launch of three NASA research missions to help us better understand and protect our home planet while continuing to search for life in our universe and inspire the next generation of explorers. The ICESat, CHIPS and SeaWinds missions will help improve life here while searching for life beyond Earth.

ICESat (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite) is the benchmark NASA mission for measuring ice-sheet mass balance -- knowledge vital to understanding and protecting our home planet.

The ICESat mission will use a laser instrument to provide multi-year elevation data needed to determine ice-sheet mass balance. The spacecraft also will provide surface and vegetation data around the globe, in addition to specific coverage over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

ICESat is due to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. on Dec. 19 at approximately 7:45 p.m. EST. Once in its final orbital position, the satellite will orbit the Earth at an altitude of approximately 373 miles (600 kilometers).

Launching with ICESat is NASA's first University-Class Explorer mission, a suitcase-sized satellite called the
Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer (CHIPS), designed to explore the birthplace of solar systems. CHIPS will study very hot, very low-density gas in the vast spaces between the stars, known as the interstellar medium, searching for important clues about formation and evolution of galaxies.

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More information about the ICESat program is available at: http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/intro.html
More information on the CHIPS is available at: http://chips.ssl.berkeley.edu
More information on the SeaWinds on Adeos II is available at:
http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/
SeaWinds/seaindex.html

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NASA 's Mission:
*To understand and protect our home planet
*To explore the Universe and search for life
*To inspire the next generation of explorers
…as only NASA can

For a further details of the NASA mission, go to: http://www.nasa.gov/bios/vision.html

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In observance and in celebration of reaching a century of flight in 2003, Goddard News will feature historical NASA flight tidbits.

This week in history: Nov 19, 1996 marked the first flight of two free-flying payloads aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. The Wake Shield Facility (WSF), was designed to fly free of the Shuttle, creating a super vacuum in its wake in which to grow thin film wafers for use in semiconductors and other high-tech electrical components. In addition, this mission was longest in orbit to date.