Author: Kate Ramsayer

NASA’s ICESat-2 Resumes Data Collection After Solar Storms

An artist's rendering of Earth, shown in natural colors against black space. Superimposed on the globe are green lines, representing the orbital paths of ICESat-2. The satellite is labeled as a dot along one of the orbits
An artist’s rendering of the orbital paths of ICESat-2, seen in green. ICESat-2 is now back in its normal orbit, after solar storms in May created unexpected drag on the spacecraft. (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite returned to science mode on June 21 UTC, after solar storms in May caused its height-measuring instrument to go into a safe hold. The ICESat-2 team restarted the mission’s instrument, a lidar called the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS), which is once again collecting precise data on the height of Earth’s ice, water, forests and land cover. No damage to the spacecraft or instrument has been detected.

The ICESat-2 instrument had been in a safe hold since May 10, when solar storms created unexpected drag on the spacecraft. This triggered an automated response to turn ATLAS off to protect the instrument. The storm also pulled the spacecraft out of its regular orbit and it drifted down 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) vertically.

The ICESat-2 operations team conducted a series of thruster burns to return the satellite to its desired orbit and completed a sequence of commands to turn ATLAS back on. The team also conducted routine fine-tuning of the laser temperatures.

Data from the instrument are now being collected as before the solar storm, and the ICESat-2 team  will continue to monitor the spacecraft and instrument, said project scientist Tom Neumann of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Observations from ICESat-2 are available free to the public at www.nsidc.org, which includes 5 ½ years of the satellite’s critical measurements of Earth’s changing ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice, forested areas, inland water bodies, and more.

After Solar Storms, ICESat-2 Expected to Resume Operations in Mid-June

An artist's rendering of the ICESat-2 satellite over Earth. The background is black, and the bottom third of the image is filled with a curving horizon of Earth, with white clouds and ice, blue ocean and green land. The ICESat-2 satellite orbits above Earth. It's a slivery box-like structure with blue solar panels off to the right. Bright green lines come down from the satellite, representing its laser.
An artist’s rendering of ICESat-2. The satellite went into a safe hold following solar storms in May 2024, and is expected to return to science mode in mid-June. (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

After going into a safe hold on May 10 due to impacts from the strongest solar storm to hit Earth in two decades, the lidar instrument on NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite is scheduled to resume collecting data around June 17. The storm did not cause any detectable damage to the satellite or its instrument.  

Between May 7 and May 11, strong solar flares and coronal mass ejections were released from the Sun and sparked a geomagnetic storm at Earth that caused our planet’s atmosphere to expand in places. This created unexpected drag on ICESat-2, rotating the satellite, and triggering the satellite to enter safe hold, which turned off ICESat-2’s science instrument. 

The ICESat-2 team has conducted two thruster burns to raise the spacecraft’s altitude, allowing it to now drift back to its normal orbit around 310 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth. Once there, the team will return the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System instrument to science mode, to continue measuring the height of Earth’s ice, water, forests, and land cover.