CryoSat-2 satellite will monitor climate change by Magdalena Rosova

European satellite CryoSat-2 took launched into space from Kayakhstan's Baikonur base this Thursday. The mission of the satellite is to study variations in the Earth's icecaps. The satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) will study how climate change effects icecaps on Earth. ESA's first attempt five years ago failed when the first satellite lost during a launch failure. But now the satellite successfully took of. CroSat-2 weights 700 kilos and took off exactly at 15:57 GMT, 17 minutes later it separated from the launcher. Mission of the satellite is to measure how much the thickness of the ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland has change. The satellite will fu! rther explore variations in the thickness of the thin ice floating in the polar oceans. The information will be very important for climate physicists, who can measure how much do man-made temperature rise impacts the nature. Global warming has intensified over the past decade, but there are still many unknown things. For example, the health of the Greenland or Antarctic land ice sheets. There is the bulk of the planet's fresh water locked up in these sheets. If the land ice sheets in Antarctica melts, sea levels could drive up and drown many coastal cities. That would force millions of people to move to higher ground. Volker Liebig, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes says that there was an urgent need to explore the ice changing. The new satellite should provide scientist with needed information on ice thickness that would help them in their calculations. Therefore the satellite is equipped with special microwave radar that can perfectly detect cha! nges in ice thickness.

related story (sgx16964)! : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/08/cryosat-eu...

by Magdalena Rosova for Cantell TV (http://cantell.tv)

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