Change in Venue for NASA's IceBridge Antarctic Operations Offers Look at New Regions

NASA's Operation IceBridge, a mission dedicated to imaging Earth's polar ice in unprecedented detail, is switching its base for its annual Antarctic campaign for the first time in four years. Previously based out of Punta Arenas, Chile, the mission is moving to the National Science Foundation's McMurdo Station located on the bare volcanic rock of Hut Point Peninsula on Ross Island.

Doing so, according to those involved, will enable researchers to measure areas previously unavailable to the mission.

"Antarctica is a big place and there are many science targets for us to hit," Tom Wagner, cryosphere program scientist at NASA's headquarters in Washington said in a statement.

The change in venue comes after nearly a year of preparation and collaboration between NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), which oversees all US-based scientific expeditions in Antarctica.

"The initial challenge was trying to comprehend and identify all of the requirements, constraints and factors of operating science instruments and a wheeled aircraft in a complex and remote environment," said Christy Hansen, IceBridge's project manager at NASA Goddard. "We've been working on this in the background during our last two campaigns."

Preparations varied from the most basic, such as ensuring food and housing for mission members, to the highly technical, such as whether IceBridge could operate the mission's aircraft and equipment without hindering the NSF and its on-going experiments in any way.

Meanwhile, aircraft technicians have been busy upgrading the mission's P-3 aircraft to meet NSF's requirements in addition to being optimized for flying in Antarctica. These upgrades included new flight management and synthetic vision system in addition to updated satellite communication hardware.

Starting in late October, IceBridge plans on beginning survey flights focused largely on the Ross Ice Shelf and regions throughout East Antarctica, whereas previous flights out of Chile largely examined portions of West Antarctica.

"The Ross Ice Shelf is the size of France and poorly understood," Wagner said.

By increasing available data on these areas, the researchers hope to improve understanding of how the ice shelf interacts with nearby ice streams in addition to gaining a clearer picture of what is happening to the continent's overall ice mass balance.

"Operating the P-3 from McMurdo has the potential to turn into a real game changer for airborne science in Antarctica and will create many new opportunities for science data collection," Michael Studinger, IceBridge's project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said. "It will now be possible to collect data over areas that have been difficult and costly to reach."