LONDON (BBC) -- The Cryosat mission lost in the Arctic Ocean last year minutes after launch from northern Russia will fly again.

The European Space Agency (Esa) has agreed to build a copy of the original £95m (140m-euro) craft.

Early estimates suggest Cryosat-2 could be ready to launch in three years. The mission will study how the Earth's ice sheets are responding to climate change amid mounting evidence that some areas are thinning.

The UK scientist behind the mission said Cryosat was too important to lose.

In an article on the BBC News website, Professor Duncan Wingham of University College London, said: "Everyone involved should be justifiably proud of their contribution, large or small as it may be, to ensuring that the Cryosat-2 has an opportunity to prove itself.

The Esa probe was lost soon after lift-off last October from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia, crashing into the very ocean it was meant to monitor.

Russian investigators later concluded that a problem with the onboard software of the upper stage of the Rockot launch vehicle was to blame.

European ministers agreed in December that re-launching Cryosat was a priority; but the final decision fell to members of Esa's Earth Observation Programme Board who met this week in Paris, France.

Some of the world's leading scientists have expressed their support for Cryosat-2, saying the data will greatly improve our understanding of climate change.

Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, UK, said it would help answer the question of whether the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are growing or decaying.

Cryosat-2 will fly closer to the poles than previous satellites, providing valuable missing data.