Although the only human occupants of Antarctica are scientists who study the sea ice from top to bottom, this continent remains a mystery to this day. One of the main questions surrounding it is: how thick is its ice cap? And it is in response to this that the European and American space agencies are launching a unique joint operation called Cryo2Ice.
On paper, this is a James Bond villain’s plan: to hijack one satellite and place it on top of another, and launch both radar and laser at Earth. In fact, the European Space Agency (ESA) changed the trajectory of its CryoSat-2 satellite so that it passes in the same place as its NASA counterpart ICESat-2. This will allow them to cover the same terrain almost simultaneously and combine their data.
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