NASA shifts its Antarctic survey base to unlock previously unseen ice landscapes

Space · Published 12 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Since 2009, NASA's IceBridge mission has monitored polar ice from southern Chile. However, a new strategy involves launching flights directly from McMurdo Station starting in mid-November. This shift allows researchers to survey Antarctic regions that have remained inaccessible to the mission's scientific instruments for several years.

Operation IceBridge is a multi-year NASA science mission designed to monitor changing ice conditions at both Earth's poles. Using a specialized suite of scientific instruments, the mission's survey flights capture vital data on ice thickness and elevation. Beyond the surface, these flights are capable of mapping the topography of bedrock and identifying water cavities hidden deep beneath the ice sheets.

The mission serves a critical temporal role in Earth science, acting as a vital link between different eras of satellite observation. Specifically, IceBridge provides the essential measurements needed to bridge the data gap between the observations from NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) and the capabilities of the upcoming ICESat-2 satellite.

A significant logistical change is occurring for the upcoming airborne field campaign. While previous operations relied on bases in southern Chile, the mission will begin flying directly from McMurdo Station in Antarctica starting in mid-November. This new operational base allows researchers to access regions of the Antarctic continent that have been unavailable to the mission since its inception in 2009.

The details of this campaign were shared during a NASA Google+ Hangout news conference held on Tuesday, October 29. The briefing featured key experts, including project scientist Michael Studinger and project manager Christy Hansen from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, alongside Chad Naughton, a project manager for the National Science Foundation's U.S. Antarctic Program.

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