Earth  ID: 13501

NASA’s Operation IceBridge Completes Eleven Years of Polar Surveys

For eleven years from 2009 to 2019, the planes of NASA’s Operation IceBridge flew above the Arctic, Antarctic and Alaska, gathering data on the height, depth, thickness, flow and change of sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets.

Designed to collect data during the years between NASA’s two Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellites, ICESat and ICESat-2, IceBridge made its final polar flight in November 2019, one year after ICESat-2’s successful launch. The fleet of aircraft carried more than a dozen instruments, from elevation-mapping lasers and ice-penetrating radars to optical and infrared cameras. And the mission did much more than bridge the altimetry gap – it enabled many other discoveries, too, from diminishing snow cover over Arctic sea ice to impact craters hidden beneath Greenland’s ice.

As the team and planes move on to their next assignments, the scientists and engineers reflected on a decade of IceBridge’s most significant accomplishments.
 

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For More Information

https://icebridge.gsfc.nasa.gov/


Credits

Lead Producers:
Katie Jepson (USRA)
LK Ward (USRA)

Technical Support:
Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET Systems, Inc.)

Writer:
Jessica Merzdorf (Telophase)

Lead Videographer:
Jefferson Beck (USRA)

Videographers:
Kate Ramsayer (Telophase)
Kathryn Mersmann (USRA)

Lead Project Scientist:
Joe MacGregor (NASA/GSFC)

Lead Deputy Project Scientists:
Linette Boisvert
Brooke Medley (NASA/GSFC)

Project Manager:
Eugenia De Marco (ATA Aerospace)

Scientist:
John Sonntag (EGG)

Animators:
Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
Cindy Starr (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
Megan Willy (IRC/UMBC)
Trent L. Schindler (USRA)

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13501

Mission:
Operation IceBridge

This item is part of this series:
Narrated Movies

Keywords:
DLESE >> Cryology
SVS >> Land Ice
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Climate Indicators
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Cryosphere
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Cryosphere >> Sea Ice
GCMD >> Location >> Antarctica
GCMD >> Location >> Arctic
SVS >> Operation IceBridge
NASA Science >> Earth

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0