New climate satellite reaches orbit

The European Space Agency successfully launched a new satellite designed to measure the effects of global warming on Earth's polar ice caps today.

ESA said it received a signal from CryoSat 2 after it took off on a Russian launcher rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, meaning lift off was successful.

CryoSat 2 is designed to pinpoint the effects of climate change on Earth's polar ice sheets. Using radar technology, it is to measure tiny variations in the thickness of ice floating in the polar oceans and on land.

In 2005, ESA lost its first CryoSat when the launcher rocket failed, causing a five-year delay of the mission eagerly awaited by glacial scientists since the 1990s.