ICBM lifts Europe's ice-sniffing sat

The European Space Agency's Cryosat-2 launched today atop a converted SS18 intercontinental ballistic missile from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome. The launch of Cryosat-2. Pic: ESA The lift-off went as planned at 13:57 GMT, and the Dnepr missile sent Cryosat-2 on its mission to precisely gauge "the changes in the thickness …

[ravenviz]

Great!

Solid, no nonsense science!

[Robert Synnott]

RE: Solid, no nonsense science

Well, unless it explodes again.

[Ed Blackshaw]

It is worth noting

That the radar altimeter can be used for surfaces other than ice, and that given that it's latitude will vary from -88 to -88 degrees, then it necessarily will cover most of the Earth's surface, really only excluding the poles.

The questions then have to be: What data can it collect, what data will it collect, by whom will those data be collected, and towards what purpose?

I have to confess that I don't know enough about the instruments on board to say how accurate they will be when directed towards other surfaces, but in principle I see no reason why this cannot be used as a general mapping satellite. Does anyone know if there are currently sattelites up there that can map surface details with a centimetre resolution, at least in the vertical dimension?

[Nexox Enigma]

(title)

"""but in principle I see no reason why this cannot be used as a general mapping satellite."""

I also don't know a whole lot about this sat, but I do know that resolution for sat topo mapping is determined by the operating wavelength of the radar, and I believe that the higher resolution frequencies reflect off trees and that sort of thing, which means you might end up with a 30m error in your measurement that's supposed to be accurate to 5cm. Obviously there shouldn't be much of a problem with trees on ice floes.

[Tom Paine]

Trickery

But how will the so-called "scientists" forming the evil conspiracy to reduce everyone's fuel bills get to the satellite data and fake it to make it appear that "thermodynamics" (ha!) are working the way Planck said they do? I suppose they'll hush everything up by releasing the complete dataset on the net, the way those other crooks at NASA Goddard, CRU, and the British Antarctic Survey have been doing for the last three decades. Never mind, I'm sure it'll be far too difficult to work out how to perform statistical analysis of the data without being indoctrinated into the hidden knowledge of normalisation, standard deviations and all the rest of that mumbo-jumbo, so the truth about the AGW conspiracy will still hold up.

[Anonymous Coward]

SS-18 launches are cool

Mainly because a 200 tonne rocket filled with some of the nastiest chemicals ever invented, (and an optional thermonuclear city killer on top), is popped out of a silo using a gunpowder explosion, and then ignites its engines in midair.

Watching one, makes you wonder how many times they had to test that bit of timing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB-vtc-d0Cg

[Baskitcaise]

Lester in time warp?

"Posted in Space, 8th April 2010 11:03 GMT

The European Space Agency's Cryosat-2 launched today atop a converted SS18 intercontinental ballistic missile from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome.

The launch of Cryosat-2. Pic: ESAThe lift-off went as planned at 13:57 GMT,"

Just wondering.

[John Dougald McCallum]

Time Warp

@ Baskitcaise. He probably has an EDIT button or some such thing at Vulture Towers.You know write the basic article and add details as and when they come available.Also this is a neat way of using up spare ICBMs

[gimbal]

Great to see

that they weren't just wringing their hands about the previous launch failure. Sh* happens even between the launchpad and the insertion into orbital trajectory - simple stuff, at that.