ICESat-2 Touchscreen Installation
NASA
"An immersive touchscreen experience bringing NASA's ice-measuring satellite mission to life - right where the science happens."
Aether Immersive built an interactive touchscreen kiosk for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, installed at the ICESat-2 building. The kiosk educates visitors, staff, and guests about the ICESat-2 satellite and its mission to measure Earth's ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice, forests, and land surfaces using the ATLAS laser altimeter system.
The experience includes a real-time 3D visualization of the satellite and its orbit built with Three.js, a ground tracks lookup tool that lets users explore where ICESat-2 is collecting data, an informational section covering the science and mission objectives, and an interactive quiz to test what visitors have learned.
ICESat-2 launched in September 2018 and fires 10,000 laser pulses per second to measure surface elevation with centimeter-level precision. The data is critical for understanding sea-level rise and climate change - and this kiosk brings that story to life for everyone who walks through Goddard's doors.
The kiosk translates complex Earth science into an intuitive, hands-on experience. A Three.js-powered 3D globe lets visitors orbit the satellite, explore its laser beam paths, and look up ground tracks across any region on Earth - making the invisible work of a satellite 500 kilometers overhead feel tangible and immediate.
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