Abstract: NASA’s ICESat-2 laser altimetry mission is revolutionizing our understanding of the polar regions including its fast-changing sea ice cover. ICESat-2, launched in fall 2018, has been specially designed for advanced sea ice profiling due its combination of high resolution (<20m), high precision (< 2 cm over flat surfaces) and dense (10 kHz, overlapping shots) along-track sampling across a novel 3 beam pair configuration – enabling accurate measurements of small-scale freeboard variability across the polar oceans from space. ICESat-2 also benefits from dense polar coverage (profiling up to 88 degrees N/S) and has collected year-round data with minimal downtime since production started in October 2018.