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NASA Begins Final Year of Airborne Polar Ice Mission

This is the last year for Operation IceBridge, NASA’s most comprehensive airborne survey of ice change. Since the launch of its first Arctic campaign in spring 2009, IceBridge has enabled discoveries ranging from water aquifers hidden within snow in southeast Greenland, to the first map indicating where the base of the massive Greenland Ice Sheet is thawed, to detailed depictions of the evolving Arctic sea ice cover and the thickness of the overlying snow.

Frazil ice (slushy sea ice), leads (openings in the ice pack) and sea smoke in a fjord in Devon Island, Canada, spotted during an Operation IceBridge survey flight on Apr. 3, 2019. Credits: NASA / Eugenia De Marco
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