Transcripts of OIB_kickoff_Arctic13_youtube_hq [music] NASA's P-3 research aircraft has landed in Thule, Greenland, and Operation IceBridge is ready to kick off its 2013 Arctic campaign. Only an eight-hour flight heading almost due north from the Virginia coast, Thule can feel like another planet, even without the occasional 60-mile-an-hour windstorm. But this year, the team was welcomed by sunny skies and surprisingly warm 40-degree temperatures and is ready to take off on its first science flight of the year. But let's step back. An IceBridge campaign doesn't actually begin here. The planning for the mission goes back months, when scientists met to hash out this year's objectives. Many different flight plans were on the table. Some focused on sea ice, some on outlet glaciers, and some on Greenland's ice sheets. Because the total flight hours in a campaign are strictly limited, it becomes a competitive process, where only the most valuable flight plans rise to the top. SCIENTIST: ... we agreed earlier that our strategy was to be that at a threshold, at least this area would get covered every year. About two or three weeks before deploying to Greenland, the IceBridge team began to integrate the radars, laser altimiters, and other instruments onto the aircraft, at NASA Goddard's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It's only then, and after a few calibration flights to ensure everything looks good, does an IceBridge campaign truly begin. For the next few weeks, IceBridge will be flying missions out of Thule, to study sea ice in the Arctic ocean, and the state of northern Greenland's glaciers. [music]