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Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry / Sea Ice and Polar Dynamics Science Team

Validation Experiments: LaRa - FASIT 2002

map: LaRa-FASIT Flight and Envisat/ERS-2 Tracks May 20, 2002

LaRa-FASIT Flight and Envisat/ERS-2 Tracks May 20, 2002


The first coincident airborne laser and radar altimetry validation experiment over sea ice, was flown in May 2002 beneath ERS-2 and Envisat along ground-tracks in the Fram Strait. This field campaign was called the Laser Radar Altimetry (LaRA) Fram Strait Altimetric Sea Ice Thickness (FASIT) experiment. Some 1400 km of flight lines were flown over a 2 day period using the NASA P3 with NASA, NOAA, and ESA support. Detailed results of the LaRA-FASIT experiment can be found in Giles et al. [2007].

Instrumentation onboard the NASA P3 included the Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) laser altimeter and the D2P Ku band (13.9GHz) radar altimeter system.

Significance: LaRA-FASIT was the first demonstration that both airborne and satellite altimetry could be collected simultaneously over sea ice.

 
photo: NASA P3 Aircraft, Svalbard, May 2002

NASA P3 Aircraft, Svalbard, May 2002

photo: Arctic Sea Ice Pack

Arctic Sea Ice