Mission: Foundation Academy IS-2 B
Priority: High
 
IceBridge successfully completed the high priority land ice mission Foundation Academy IS-2 B today. As predicted, the outflow from the continent caused clear skies and no weather issues during our flight. Thus, we were able to have 100% data collection along the lines.
 
This OIB flight was designed to target the strong beam of each beam pair along ICESat-2 ground tracks that cross the channel of Academy and Support Force ice streams. This was also the first time this mission has been flown.
 
The 4 ICESat-2 ground tracks that were flown and their latency between the IS2 crossovers are listed below:
0238, t = 6 days
0939, t = 40days
0695, t = 24 days
0451, t = 8days
 
Outreach: Since today is Saturday and schools are not in session, no class chats were conducted during our mission.
 
Media: OIB hosted Steelhead a 3-person documentary crew during our mission today. Various instrument team members onboard were interviewed. Their feature length documentary ‘The Last Glacier’ will have ~15 minutes allotted to OIB.
 
Outlook: Tomorrow we will take a mandatory crew rest hard down day and plan to resume science missions on Monday, weather permitting.
 
List of Images:

1. Map of today’s science mission (John Sonntag/NASA)
2. MCCORDS radar echogram over the Academy Glacier along the first IS-2 ground track. Showing layers of ice and bedrock. (Jilu Li/KU CrESiS)
3. 50 cm stastrugi present in the Academy glacier channel which is nicely picked up by the ATM T-6 laser. (Matt Linkswiler/NASA)
4. DC8 flying over crevasses and nunataks in the Pensacola Mountains. (Jeremy Harbeck/NASA)
5. Alexey Chibosov walking up the stairs to the NASA DC8 after cleaning the ATM window preflight (Jeremy Harbeck/NASA)
6. Jilu Li and Hara Talasila looking at MCCORDS data of ice thickness of at least 2400m in the Academy glacier channel during flight. (Jeremy Harbeck/NASA)