NASA Launches Second Year Mission To Survey Polar Ice

LOS ANGELES -- NASA on Sunday kicked off the second year of a mission designed to demeanor an airborne survey of the Earth's polar ice.

"The 1st priority is to survey Arctic sea ice, which reaches its maximum extent each year in March or early April,” is according to a NASA statement. "High- and low-altitude flights also will survey Greenland's ice sheets and outer glaciers," the statement added.

The mission will be conducted by an aircraft which takes off as of the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility near Palmdale, Southern California later in the day, as said by NASA.

NASA calls the mission as the largest airborne survey ever of the Earth's polar ice.

The DC-8 airborne science laboratory is scheduled to arrive in Greenland on Monday, March 22, 2010 as part of Operation IceBridge.

From there, scientists and flight crews expect to do 10 to 12 missions over the Arctic over a 5 week period, recording changes in the extent as well as thickness of polar ice.

The DC-8 as well as a smaller aircraft -- a P-3B -- will be equipped with an Airborne Topographic Mapper, which measures alterations in the surface elevation of ice by bouncing laser beams from the land back to the aircraft and converting the readings into elevation maps.

One more laser altimeter -- the Land, Vegetation and Ice Sensor - -is used at higher altitudes and can survey larger areas more quickly, as said by NASA.