When NASA first explained its hope that our committee could review its strategy for providing satellite-derived geophysical data sets to the polar science community and provide guidance to make future data sets more useful, the task seemed somewhat ambiguous and daunting. We could not look in depth at every available data set given the time and resources available, nor did it feel particularly useful to comment on what was right or wrong in past decisions. But as the committee met and gathered information, it became clear that our most useful contribution could lie in determining how a better match could be achieved between NASA’s data sets and the needs of NASA’s current strategic guide, the Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) program. By analyzing what information is needed to address the ESE questions from a cryospheric perspective and then mapping those needs against existing resources, we found a way to turn our review into concrete suggestions to guide future activities