TASIILAQ, Greenland, Aug 23: From a helicopter, Greenland’s brilliant white ice and dark mountains make the desolation seem to go on forever. And the few people who live here — its whole population wouldn’t fill a football stadium — are poor, with a high rate of substance abuse and suicide.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2, lifted off at 9:02 a.m. EDT (6:02 a.m. PDT) at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California of the United States.