Article Posted on : - Sep 02, 2011

An illustration of ICESat satellite in space.

DULLES (BNS): NASA has awarded $135 million contract to Orbital Sciences Corporation to design, build and test the ICESat-2 Earth observation satellite.

The ICESat-2, which will be built as the successor of the original ICESat satellite that operated from 2003 to 2010, is scheduled for launch in 2016.

The new satellite will be based on the Orbital-designed LEOStar-3 platform, the same technology that is being used for NASA’s Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) spacecraft.

ICESat-2 will use precision laser-ranging techniques to measure the topography of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and the thickness of sea ice, Orbital said.