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NASA P-3B Orion waits outside the hangar at Thule Air Base with the Greenland Ice sheet in the background. The aircraft is set to begin the 2013 season of NASAs Operation IceBridge mission to survey Earths polar ice sheets in unprecedented three-dimensional detail. The plane just arrived from NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia where the author visited it before departure see authors P-3B photos below. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Michael Studinger

NASAs Operation IceBridge has begun the 2013 research season of Ice Science flights in Greenland and the Arctic to survey the regions ice sheets and land and sea ice using a specially equipped P-3B research aircraft from NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va.

Operation IceBridge began in 2009 as part of NASAs six-year long effort to conduct the largest airborne survey of Earths polar ice ever flown.

The goal is to obtain an unprecedented three-dimensional, multi-instrument view of the behavior of Greenland, Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice which have been undergoing rapid and dramatic changes and reductions.

Were starting to see how the whole ice sheet is changing, said Michael Studinger, IceBridge project scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Thinning at the margins is now propagating to the interior.

The P-3 exiting the hanger pre-flight in Thule. Credit: NASA

The airborne campaign was started in order to maintain a continuous record of measurements in changes in polar ice after NASAs Earth orbiting ICESat (Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite) probe stopped collecting data in 2009.

ICESat-2 wont be launched until 2016, so NASAs IceBridge project and yearly P-3 airborne campaigns will fill in the science data gap in the interval.

The P-3B Orion just arrived from NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia where I visited it before departure see my P-3B photos herein.

Original post:

NASA ’s Operation IceBridge Surveys Greenland and Earth’s Polar Ice Sheets