IceBridge Stories

Earth’s cryosphere is vital for everyone. Here’s how NASA keeps track of its changes.

Everything on our planet — the land, the water, the air, people — is connected by the various chemical, physical and biological processes that make up what we call the Earth system. One of the key components of that huge…

NASA’s Operation IceBridge Completes Eleven Years of Polar Surveys

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. Designed to collect…

Laser Precision: NASA Flights, Satellite Align Over Sea Ice

The skies were clear, the winds were low, and the lasers aligned. In April, instruments aboard NASA’s Operation IceBridge airborne campaign and the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 succeeded in measuring the same Arctic sea ice at the same…