Washington, Dec 15 (PTI) A team led by two NASAscientists is all set to embark on a 750-kilometre expeditionin one of the most barren landscapes on Earth to survey anunexplored stretch of Antarctic ice.
On December 21, they will begin their two-to three-weektraverse in an arc around the South Pole, the NASA said.
The expedition will ultimately provide the bestassessment of the accuracy of data collected from space by theIce Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), set tolaunch in 2018, according to the US space agency.
They are packing extreme cold-weather gear and scientificinstruments onto sleds pulled by two tank-like snow machinescalled PistenBullys, the NASA said.
With a fast-firing laser instrument, ICESat-2 willmeasure the elevation of ice sheets and track change overtime.
Even small amounts of melt across areas as vast asGreenland or Antarctica can result in large amounts ofmeltwater contributing to sea level rise.
To help document this, ICESat-2's height changemeasurements will have a precision of less than an inch-ground-truthed, in part, with efforts like this Antarcticcampaign.
The team will collect precise GPS data of the elevationat 88 degrees south, where ICESat-2's orbits converge,providing thousands of points where the survey measurementscan be compared to satellite data.
"This traverse provides an extremely challenging andextremely cold way to assess the accuracy of the data," saidKelly Brunt from NASA.
"ICESat-2's datasets are going to tell us incrediblethings about how Earth's ice is changing, and what that meansfor things like sea level rise," Brunt said. PTI SNE SARSNE.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.