Fibertek of Herndon, Va., nabbed a $26 million contract to design and build laser systems for NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission scheduled to launch in 2016, the U.S. space agency said May 26.
Under the contract, Fibertek will provide four flight lasers and one test laser for ICESat-2’s Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System instrument. ICESat-2 is being designed to measure the topography of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and the thickness of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice.
NASA’s first ICESat observatory was decommissioned in 2010 following the failure of its primary instrument.
