In
March 2014, a team of scientists returned to the Arctic with NASA’s P-3
aircraft to continue Operation IceBridge, a multi-year aerial survey of polar
ice. IceBridge is designed to maintain the continuity of measurements between
NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), which stopped
functioning in 2009, and its successor, ICESat-2, which is scheduled for launch
in 2017.
The
first science flight of this year’s campaign occurred on March 12, with the P-3
taking off from Thule Air Base in Greenland to survey sea ice over the Fram
Strait. The belly of the plane was packed with radars, altimeters, gravimeters,
and an array of sensors designed to yield a three-dimensional view of the ice.
Scientists on the plane also had less exotic sensors with them: cameras.
Michael Studinger, the IceBridge project scientist, captured this photograph of
the Moon and the glow of morning sunlight on snow-covered peaks in northeastern
Greenland.
For
updates on the 2014 IceBridge campaign, read the team’s blog and website. You
can also follow the team’s Flickr page, Facebook page, and their Twitter
account.
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