ICESat, The Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite, is a benchmark mission, which will achieve the Earth Systems Enterprise/Earth Observing Systems' requirements for measuring ice sheet mass balance, cloud and aerosol heights, optical densities, vegetation and land topography.

CHIPSat is the first NASA University Explorers satellite. A Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer aboard the spacecraft will examine the instellar medium, the gas that fills space between the stars. By measuring the distribution and intensity of the glow, scientists will be able to test several competing theories about the formation of the clouds of hot interstellar gas that surround our solar system.