Last Delta II Rocket Launches NASA Satellite to Map Earth’s Ice with Space Laser

Sept 15, 2018
NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2, lifted off at 9:02 a.m. EDT (6:02 a.m. PDT or 1302 GMT) from Space Launch Complex-2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California. “We’re not going to turn ATLAS on for about a week and then we’re just checking it out. We don’t open up the [telescope] door for about another week. And then we start collecting early data from ATLAS, turn on the lasers and start our commissioning process,” said McLennan, adding that the commissioning period will last about 60 days.
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