NASA is set to launch its Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2 -- that will track Earth's melting poles and disappearing sea ice -- on Saturday.

The satellite with a three-year mission is scheduled to launch at 8.46 a.m. EDT on September 15, with liftoff aboard a Satellite Delta II rocket from Space Launch Complex-2 (SLC-2), the US space agency said in a blog post late on Tuesday. ICESat-2 is the NASA's most advanced laser instrument -- the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System, or ATLAS. It measures height by precisely timing how long it takes individual photons of light from a laser to leave the satellite, bounce off Earth and return to the satellite.