Jet here for ice probe
A SPECIAL aircraft to be used for Antarctic exploration has been unveiled at Hobart Airport ahead of the start of an Australian-first mission.
As revealed by the Mercury yesterday, NASA has chosen Hobart as its base ahead of a project to map Antarctica’s eastern coastline from the air.
The sophisticated Gulfstream V aircraft touched down this week ahead of Operation IceBridge, which is part of the largest survey ever undertaken of the Earth’s changing ice.
It features a range of instruments to record data, including two lasers that measure ice elevation to a precision of less than five centimetres.
NASA deputy project scientist Linette Boisvert said the aircraft also featured radar sounders, temperature sensors, a gravimeter and multiple cameras to survey the properties of snow and ice.
“The primary aim of our research is to collect the data needed to improve projections of future sea level change caused by a changing climate and making more accurate forecasts of annual sea ice extent,’’ she said.
Dr Boisvert said the aircraft featured a suite of instruments crucial to exploring Antarctica and working towards “bridging the knowledge data gap”.
“We have a couple of lasers which measure the elevation of the ice below and a couple of different radars which penetrate through the snow and ice surface and all the way through to the bedrock of the ice so we can see how think the land ice is on Antarctica,’’ she said.
Dr Boisvert said the aircraft would fly down to 500 metres, and flights would take 10 hours.
The first flight is due to depart Hobart today with the mission to last one month.
Australian Antarctic Division sea ice physicist Petra Heil is co-ordinating a team at Casey research station that will complement the work of the flights, and NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite. The ground team will also include two NASA scientists and will move along the route of the aircraft and the polar-orbiting satellite, collecting ice cores and measuring snow cover.
“With NASA’s Operation IceBridge flying for more than a month and our ground team on the ice at the same time, in terms of fieldwork this is the biggest coup we’ve had in our research for a while,’’ Dr Heil said.
Yesterday was the official start of the Australian Antarctic Program’s research season. AAD director Kim Ellis said it was an exciting time of year.
“Like a football team, we have been getting ready for this for months,’’ he said.
About 550 expeditioners would travel south as part of the Australian Antarctic Program in the 2019-20 summer season.