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Inside Building 836 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, one of the payload fairing halves for the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta II rocket is being secured to a rolling work stand. NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) is scheduled to launch on the final ULA Delta II rocket later this year. ICESat-2 will measure the height of a changing Earth, one laser pulse at a time, 10,000 laser pulses a second. The satellite will carry a single instrument, the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System. ICESat-2 will help scientists investigate why, and how much our planet's frozen and icy areas, called the cryosphere, is changing in a warming climate.