CryoSat and climate change

Tackling Earth's changing climate is a priority today and ESA is leading this effort, with its Earth observation satellites providing scientists with information on many of the key variables that are affecting our environment, whether these are from natural causes or induced by humans. ESA's 'Ice Mission' CryoSat-2 will provide data at an unprecedented precision on the rates of melting of ice on land and at sea. The technical issue on the Dnepr rocket that delayed the CryoSat-2 launch last February has now been resolved, and CryoSat is due for launch on 8 April 2010 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.