Cryosat Mission

This video provides an in-depth look at ESA's CryoSat mission. The CryoSat satellite is a radar altimetry mission designed to observe polar regions and continental glaciers. It will monitor the thickness of land ice and sea ice and help explain the connection between the melting of the polar ice and the rise in sea levels and how this is contributing to climate change.to provide data on the thickness of the Earth's continental ice sheets and marine sea ice cover. Ice sheets have a central role in the global climate. Its main payload is an instrument called Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Radar Altimeter (SIRAL). The satellite will be launched on a Rockot vehicle from Plesetsk in Russia in autumn 2005. Soundbites are provided by CryoSat Lead Investigator Pr. Duncan Wingham from University College London, who proposed the mission in 1997/98.