This strange blue spiral appearing over Hawaii perplexed many, and this green laser scan from space is even more bizarre, as captured by the Subaru-Asahi Star Camera. Looking like something straight from ‘The Matrix’ movies, it is reportedly just lights from remote-sensing altimeter satellite ICESat-2/43613, which was launched by NASA back in 2018.
What are the ICESat-2’s lasers used for? They are used to collect a more detailed, precise picture of the heights of the planet’s ice, vegetation, land surface, water and clouds. When ICESat-2 orbits over the poles, its Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) has three major tasks: send pulses of laser light to the ground, collect the returning photons in a telescope, and record the photon travel time.
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The time-tagged piece of data about each returned photon is communicated to the electronics and communication system on ICESat-2’s spacecraft and sent to the ground. Computer programs can take that travel time and satellite position, do a calculation involving the speed of light, and tell researchers the distance the photon traveled,” said NASA.
