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10:00 A mission of scientists from the National Administration of Aeronautics and Space United States (NASA) went to Tierra del Fuego to undertake a series of research flights on the Antarctic continent. For the first time, Argentina will be the base of the IceBridge program, which aims to study and understand the behavior of glaciers and ice caps in this region.
On October 25, a model P-3 plane arrived in the city of Ushuaia. this mission. The aircraft will fly over the western Antarctic, the fastest changing region of the continent, to study the ice of the seas of Bellingshausen and Weddell and the glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsula as well as the coasts English and bryan. Scientists plan to do at least six flights and up to eleven, depending on weather conditions.
For the first time in nine years that IceBridge has been in the southern hemisphere, the mission will launch two series of consecutive specialized flights over Antarctica from two continents: South America and the United States. 39 Antarctica, with two aircraft and instrument equipment. "This is an exciting and ambitious initiative for IceBridge since dual campaigns will allow us to continue to monitor important areas near the Antarctic Peninsula and greatly expand our coverage of the vast expanses of East Antarctica." ", said Nathan Kurtz, an IceBridge Project scientist and researcher on sea ice at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
Although the IceBridge mission has been active since 2009, it is the first time that it will be deployed from Ushuaia. "By flying from Ushuaia to Punta Arenas square, we save an hour of flying to and from Antarctica, as we try to maximize the data collection time while we fly over the sea. Antarctica and surrounding areas.In the case of flights with the P-3, the mission carries its full set of instruments, the main component of which is a topographic laser altimeter that measures the elevation of the surface IceBridge will fly off with two versions of this instrument: one equipped only with a green laser and, for the first time, a two-color version emitting infrared laser pulses The data collected by the two-color laser instrument will be used to link measurements made by IceBridge with those of a forthcoming NASA satellite mission: Ice, Cloud and Earth Elevation – Satellite-2 or ICESat- 2, whose launch will be prev u for the end of 2018.
The goal of the IceBridge mission is to collect data on changes in polar ice and to maintain continuity of measurements between ICES missions. The original ICESat mission was launched in 2003 and culminated in 2009 and the launch of its successor, ICESat-2, is scheduled for the end of 2018. The IceBridge mission began in 2009 and is expected to continue until In 2020, so that it will coexist with ICESat-2 to help scientists link the measurements of the two satellites. (United States Embbady)
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