NASA scientists are set to embark on a 756-kilometre expedition in one of the most barren landscapes on Earth to survey an unexplored stretch of Antarctic ice.The team led by two NASA scientists will begin their two- to three-week traverse in an arc around the South Pole on December 21, NASA said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are packing extreme cold-weather gear and scientific instruments onto sleds pulled by two tank-like snow machines called PistenBullys,\u201d the US space agency added.<\/p>\n
The expedition will ultimately help scientists to make the best assessment of the accuracy of data collected from space by the Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), set to launch in 2018.<\/p>\n
With a fast-firing laser instrument, ICESat-2 will measure the elevation of ice sheets and track change over time.<\/p>\n
Even small amounts of melt across areas as vast as Greenland or Antarctica can result in large amounts of meltwater contributing to sea level rise.<\/p>\n
To help document this, ICESat-2\u2019s height change measurements will have a precision of less than an inch – ground-truthed, in part, with efforts like this Antarctic campaign.<\/p>\n
The team will collect precise GPS data of the elevation at 88 degrees south, where ICESat-2\u2019s orbits converge, providing thousands of points where the survey measurements can be compared to satellite data, NASA said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis traverse provides an extremely challenging and extremely cold way to assess the accuracy of the data,\u201d said Kelly Brunt of NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center, and a research scientist at the University of Maryland.<\/p>\n
\u201cICESat-2\u2019s datasets are going to tell us incredible things about how Earth\u2019s ice is changing, and what that means for things like sea level rise,\u201d Brunt added.
\nIANS<\/p>\n
Picture courtesy: Alamy<\/p>\n
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