Ice spy

摘要

On 8 April, on the barren steppes of Kazakhstan, a UK-led team of space engineers held its collective breath as it watched an adapted SS-18 ballistic missile tear into the sky over the Baikonur Cosmodrome.rnAttached to the former Soviet launcher was CryoSat-2, the European Space Agency's (ESA's) first satellite dedicated to monitoring polar ice. For the next three years, it will orbit Earth at an altitude higher than 700km while recording changes in the thickness of the planet's ice sheets.