Mission: Victoria Flowlines
Priority: High
 
This mission is designed to survey a series of glacier flowlines in Victoria Land. The glaciers include Lilie, Black, Canham, Rennick, and additional flowlines draining Evans Neve. Most of these areas are unmapped in terms of bedrock geometry, although we do repeat small sections of 2013 and 2017 OIB flights in the area. We also extend the Rennick 01/02 grid on the exit leg of this mission, in order to help fill a gap in bedrock measurements, which corresponds to an area of thinning identified by ICESat.
 
Weather models and morning satellite imagery showed northern Victoria Land free of clouds, but with low clouds offshore and a little fog in some of the valleys. Models indicated clearing conditions through the day. On arrival, we observed a very thin stratus deck near the coast at about 10,000 ft AGL, but were able to descend through it with adequate visibility to the terrain beneath. All instruments performed well, 100% successful data collection minus bad MCoRDS channel. We performed a ramp pass at 1200 ft AGL on arrival at Hobart.
 
Excepting OIB Alaska, today’s flight represents OIB’s 900^th polar science mission.
 
Attached images:

1. Map of today’s mission (John Sonntag / NASA)
2. A small mountain on the south side of Canham Glacier, with our left wing in the foreground (John Sonntag / NASA)
3. An icefall in the Lanterman Mountains (John Sonntag / NASA)
4. The Bowers Mountains, with lower Rennick Glacier at foreground (John Sonntag / NASA)
5. Exposed layers along a cliff face along lower Rennick Glacier (Renata Constantino / LDEO)