T-16: Earth’s Ice from the Air

NASA’s airborne researchers travel to some of the most remote places on the planet. For eleven years from 2009 through 2019, the planes of NASA’s Operation IceBridge flew above the Arctic, Antarctic and Alaska, gathering data on the height, depth, thickness, flow and change of sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets.

During that time, IceBridge gave us new and unprecedented understanding of how our planet is changing with the climate. Designed to “bridge the gap” between the original Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) and ICESat-2, IceBridge helped map the bedrock of Greenland and Antarctica and spotted massive rifts in the Antarctic Ice Sheet, both of which help us better understand future sea level rise.

NASA logo with the blue circle replaced with EarthThe mission wrapped up last year but scientists are still uncovering new things in the data collected by Operation IceBridge.