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The rapidity of snowcover change on the Hazen Plateau is demonstrated in the following images from June of 2000. The Murray Ice Cap is circled on the 24 June image. These are Landsat-7 scenes (U.S. Geological Survey EROS Data Center) obtained courtesy of the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, ESS / NRCan
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The Landsat-7 satellite was launched 15 April 1999. Data are collected from a nominal altitude of 705 kilometers in a near-polar, near-circular, Sun-synchronous orbit at an inclination of 98.2 degrees, imaging the same 183-km swath of the Earth's surface every 16 days. The Landsat-7 satellite's payload includes the nadir-pointing ETM+ sensor (an enhanced version of the TM sensor flown aboard Landsat-4 and -5).
The orbital pattern equates to a 233-orbit cycle with a swath sidelap that varies from approximately 7 percent at the Equator to nearly 84 percent at 81 degrees north or south latitude. Nominal ground sample distances or pixel sizes include 30 meters each for the six visible, near-infrared, and shortwave infrared bands, 60 meters for the thermal infrared band, and 15 meters for the panchromatic band. The ETM+ sensor is designed to produce approximately 3.8 gigabits of data for each Landsat scene.