ICESat-2's Instrument Lifted from Space-Simulating Chamber
1,358 views · Published 20 April 2015 · 0:37 · Indexed 20 September 2026
Channel: NASA Video · 2015 · Science & Technology
Once in orbit, the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 will go from basking in the heat of the sun to freezing in Earth’s shadow every 90 minutes. And every second in that orbit, it will need to take thousands of precise measurements of the height of the surface below. So before launching the satellite into the harsh environment of space, engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland want to make sure that the laser instrument aboard (called the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System, or ATLAS) works consistently day and night, whatever the temperature. Once the ATLAS box structure successfully completed a round of testing in the thermal vacuum chamber, where temperatures were raised and lowered to simulate the harsh conditions in space, crews lifted the instrument out of the chamber and rolled it back to its spot in a NASA Goddard clean room. Read more: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasas-atlas-thermal-testing-you-re-hot-then-you-re-cold/ Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Ryan Fitzgibbons
