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Narrator: Antarctica is covered by the largest piece of ice on Earth.

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How that ice moves and changes affects

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the entire planet. A NASA airborne mission

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called Operation IceBridge is now completing its eighth consecutive year

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of measuring the changes in Antarctic ice. The science team uses

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the most comprehensive suite of instruments ever flown on long range flights,

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including lasers, radars, an infrared sensor,

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digital photography, and a gravimeter.

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The mission was born out of a need to bridge the gap in observations between

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NASA’s ICESat satellite, which ended its mission in 2009, and

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ICESat-2, scheduled for launch in 2018. This year

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IceBridge was able to fly two missions around the 88th parallel,

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to provide measurements at the southernmost edge of ICESat-2’s planned orbits.

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Many of IceBridge’s 24 science flights this

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year were focused on mapping the sea floor, where the Antarctic Ice Sheet

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meets ocean waters, so that scientists can better predict how fast

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the margins of the ice might melt. The mission also flew

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extensively over Antarctic sea ice, measuring extent and thickness

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of the frozen seawater. The team found coverage to be sparse

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in the Bellingshausen Sea — and as we know from satellite observations

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, sea ice coverage around the continent is currently at a record low

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for this time of year.Several missions around the Antarctic Peninsula

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also provided a wealth of data and some beautiful images.

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Of special interest was a flight over a growing crack in the Larsen C

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ice shelf. Once this crack is fully formed, it will produce

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an iceberg roughly the size of the state of Delaware.

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All of this year’s flights were based out of Punta Areas, Chile,

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but next year, IceBridge plans to fly out of McMurdo Station

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in Antarctica in order to hit a new range of important science targets

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and continue to shed light on how melting polar ice is contributing

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is contributing to sea level rise.

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[music fades]