14 DAY TRIAL // Originally scheduled to take off in February, the European Space Agency's (ESA) new Earth-observing satellite, CryoSat-2, was delayed by an unexpected technical glitch. The spacecraft was supposed to take off aboard a Russian-built Dnepr delivery system, but shortly before the launch, engineers discovered an error in the second stage of the rocket. The mission has been grounded ever since, but now officials at space agency and the companies involved in building the Dnepr launch vehicle have reached a consensus on when to schedule a new flight attempt.
“The launch of CryoSat-2 was originally scheduled to take place from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on February 24, but had to be postponed owing to a problem with the fuel reserve in the launcher's second stage. The problem had surfaced a week before the scheduled launch date and after the 'space head module', encasing the CryoSat-2 satellite, had been mated to the rest of the rocket in the launch silo. Consequently, the space head was returned to the integration facilities pending an investigation and new launch date,” ESA officials write on their official website.
This satellite is the most advanced spacecraft aimed at surveying ice sheets ever to be deployed. CryoSat will have an extreme sensibility to even the most minute changes, as it will feature a high-performance instrument suite that will allow it to keep track of several parameters at the same time. One of its primary goals is to map the ice thickness over water and land, engineers behind the spacecraft say.
One of the main reasons why this mission was put together was the fact that the changes happening on the Earth's pole on account of global warming and climate change were beginning to evolve rapidly. Climatologists therefore needed a tool capable of producing sensitive measurements of the regions of interest, covering the recent record-lows in the extent of summer Arctic sea-ice cover. Additionally, scientists also need to be able to determine how the thickness of the ices is changing around the year. A better understanding of these dynamics will contribute to climate-change studies, and will provide more variables for computer models.
“The 700 kg CryoSat spacecraft – whose name comes from the Greek kruos meaning icy cold – carries the first all-weather microwave radar altimeter. The instrument has been optimized for determining changes in the thickness of both floating sea ice, which can be up to several meters, and polar land ice sheets, which in Antarctica can be up to five kilometers. The mission will deliver data on the rate of change of the ice thickness accurate to within one centimeter,” ESA officials said last month.