Mission: Northeast Grid 05 Prime

Priority: High

 

This is a new mission, one of a suite of six flights intended to thoroughly sample the bedrock topography of northeast Greenland along a series of nearly coast-parallel ICESat lines. For 2019, we completely redesigned this flight, although the original purpose remains the same. We change the east- west transit lines to follow the latitudes of low-latency ICESat-2 crossovers, and we fly a low-latency IS-2 ground track in the east, which also covers a “hot-spot” in the bed uncertainty. We fly a second roughly north-south line in the east targeted at multiple such hot-spots. We also add brief flyovers of an interesting subglacial site in the northeast, a Cold War-era waste site in the west, and a small ice dome between Tracy and Heilprin Glaciers.

 

An unencouraging suite of imagery and models for the Arctic Ocean and northwest Greenland brought us back to northeast Greenland today. Again covering new ground and achieving a variety of objectives. After breaking out of the cloud ceilings at Thule, we headed to the northernmost line first. We again surveyed the curious ice dome along a different azimuth than originally planned and also observed a Greenlandic hunting party. Some wispy fog was encountered west of the central ice divide, but then skies were clear and the survey lines proceeded uneventfully. ATM reports 99% laser altimetry data collection, and MCoRDS in swath imaging mode (beam steering + ping-pong) performed well. Snow radar a minor quasi-coherent noise issue that was traced to MCoRDS and will be remediated post-flight. Headwall continued to have brief freezing issues. With diligent testing and replacement of a faulty RS-232 to USB converter, ATM appears to have resolved a longstanding issue with Applanix IMUs today. Due to conditions at Thule upon our return, we performed five passes before attempting to land and getting waved off, forcing us to divert to Kangerlussuaq, an OIB first. Some of us were better prepared for this eventuality than others. Quoting Jim Yungel (ATM) as he enthusiastically showed us his go-bag: "I prepared for a quarter century for this and it finally happened."

 

ICESat-2 reference ground track (RGT) / latency (positive/negative = ICESat-2 orbits before/after our flight)

330 / -9 days

 

Attached images:

1. Map of today's mission (John Sonntag / NASA)

2. Matt Linkswiler and Eugenia De Marco describing OIB instrument operation to Thule AB command personnel prior to today's flight (Jeremy Harbeck / NASA)

3. The terminus of Tracy Glacier (Joe MacGregor / NASA)

4. Greenlandic hunting camp in upper Inglefield Fjord, surrounded by sled dog team (Jeremy Harbeck / NASA)

5. The small circular ice dome between Tracy and Heilprin Glaciers in northwest Greenland (Joe MacGregor / NASA)

6. John Paden monitoring MCoRDS while surveying the subglacial site of interest in northeast Greenland (Jeremy Harbeck / NASA)

7. A panorama of nunataks and mountains in central East Greenland, at the southeastern end of today's survey (Jeremy Harbeck / NASA)