Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) on the ICESat mission: On-orbit measurement performance

Abstract

The GLAS instrument on NASA's ICESat satellite has made over 904 million measurements of the Earth surface and atmosphere through June 2005. During its first seven operational campaigns it has vertically sampled the Earth's global surface and atmosphere on more than 3600 orbits with vertical resolutions approaching 3 cm. This paper summarizes the on-orbit measurement performance of GLAS to date. Copyright 2005 by the American Geophysical Union.