NASA IceBridge mission prepares for study of arctic glaciers Published March 23, 2010 NASA Dryden Flight Research Center PALMDALE, Calif. -- NASA's Operation IceBridge mission, the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice, kicks off its second year of study when NASA aircraft arrive in Greenland March 22. NASA's DC-8 airborne science laboratory departed the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif. for Thule, Greenland, March 21. Scientists and flight crew will fly approximately 10 to 12 science missions over the Arctic over a five-week period. The first priority is to survey Arctic sea ice, which reaches its maximum extent each year in March or early April. High and low-altitude flights also will survey Greenland's ice sheet and outlet glaciers. The IceBridge mission allows scientists to track changes in the extent and thickness of polar ice, which is important for understanding ice dynamics. IceBridge began in March 2009 as a means to fill the gap in polar observations between the loss of NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat and the launch of ICESat-2, planned for 2015. Annual missions fly over the Arctic in March and April and over Antarctica in October and November. "NASA's IceBridge mission is characterizing the changes occurring in the world's polar ice sheets," said Tom Wagner, cryosphere program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The mission's goal is to collect the most important data for improving predictive models of sea level rise and global climate change." Researchers plan to resurvey previous flight lines and former ground tracks of ICESat while adding new areas of interest. Scientists also will target some areas that have been undergoing mysterious changes. The major glaciers in southeast Greenland once thinned simultaneously, but some of those glaciers have been thinning at an accelerated rate -- as much as 40 feet per year -- while others have thickened. Glaciers in Northwest Greenland, once a stable region, have mostly begun to thin.