NASA Selects Laser Contractor for ICESat-2

Officials at the American space agency say that they are planning to launch a replacement for a now-defunct ice-monitoring satellite as soon as 2016. They have now just decided on the contractor that will build the spacecraft's laser systems.

The cost-plus-award-fee contract is worth more than $26 million dollars, and it covers a period spanning from signing to launch, plus an additional 38 months of operations. This will ensure technical support for the laser for more than 3 years of orbital operations.

NASA decided to award the contract to Herndon, Virginia-based company Fibertek, which now has to design, develop, build, test and deliver the advanced laser systems that will power the new satellite.

The vehicle is called the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), and its mission will be managed by experts at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in Greenbelt, Maryland.

It will replace the first ICESat satellite, that NASA deorbited at the end of a very successful mission on August 30, 2010. Its debris were scattered in the Barents Sea, between Norway and Russia.

“ICESat has been a tremendous scientific success. It has provided detailed information on how the Earth's polar ice masses are changing with climate warming, as needed for government policy decisions,” said GSFC project scientist Jay Zwally,

Under the new contract, Fibertek needs to provide NASA with four, spaceflight-capable lasers, and a single test laser. The former will be installed in the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System instrument on ICESat-2.

“The spaceflight laser systems consist of the optical, electrical, mechanical, material, wire harnessing, thermal control, flight software, flight firmware and support equipment. Work will be performed at the contractor's facility,” a NASA press release reads.

“ICESat-2 is the second generation of the ICESat observatories. ICESat-2 will use precision laser-ranging techniques to measure the topography of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and the thickness characteristics of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice,” it adds.

“ICESat-2 supports NASA's Earth Science program by helping scientists develop a better scientific understanding of the Earth system and its response to natural or human-induced changes,” the release concludes.