NASA’s Operation IceBridge has been monitoring Arctic sea ice from planes for a decade.
During four flights in April, it followed the orbital paths of the new ICESat-2 satellite.
The plane and satellite measured the same stretch of sea ice at the same time.
These images taken by IceBridge’s CAMBOT instrument show sea ice floes and leads during one of the four flights.
A new study checks the measurements from IceBridge and ICESat-2 and finds they match almost exactly...
…which shows the new satellite is gathering precise, high quality data over sea ice.