by Renata Johnson
Six University of Maryland researchers are part of the team behind the Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer (EDGE), a satellite mission concept aimed at monitoring changes in Earth’s terrestrial, coastal and ice-covered regions that was selected by NASA to launch as early as 2030.
EDGE will expand coverage of wooded ecosystems to a global scale and produce detailed maps of land and sea ice across Earth’s polar regions. The spacecraft would use five laser beams with new swath-imaging lidar technology, sending laser pulses to the Earth’s surface and recording the time it takes them to return to the spacecraft to precisely determine the height of the Earth’s surface and 3D structure of forests and woodlands.
Associate Research Scientist Rachel Tilling from UMD’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center is part of the EDGE team.
