Engineering: NASA goes south

 

Researchers are to work from NASA’s DC-8, an airborne lab, to study the changes to Antarctica’s sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. The mission is the largest airborne survey ever made at the Earth’s Polar Regions.

The airborne lab is equipped with laser mapping instruments, ice-penetrating radar and gravity instruments. Data collected from the six-year mission will help scientists better predict how changes to the Antarctic ice sheet will contribute to rising sea levels around the world.

NASA will start a series of flights from this Thursday, 15 October, as part of the mission named Operation Ice Bridge.

Data collected during the mission also aims to bridge the data gap between NASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite, known as ICESat, and NASA's ICESat-II, scheduled to launch no earlier than 2014. ICESat-II is due to replace and carry on the work of ICE-Sat.

Tom Wagner, cryosphere program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said: "A remarkable change is happening on Earth, truly one of the biggest changes in environmental conditions since the end of the ice age. It's not an easy thing to observe, let alone predict what might happen next. Studies like Ice Bridge are key."

Up in the air

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