1Newsletter // The Ice Breaker // Summer 2011www.cresis.ku.edu

C E N T E R FO R R E M OT E S E N S I N G O F I C E S H E E T S

SUMMER 2011

The Icebreaker

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Twin Otter Flies in GreenlandCReSIS Team to Test UAV in Greenland // Research Experience at CReSISGhana REU Students Relish Time in CReSIS, AmericaPNAS Publication Highlights CReSIS Researcher’s Accomplishment // ECSU Among the Nation’s Best Institutions P-3 Antenna Array Changes Produce Faster, Clearer Results Unraveling Byrd GlacierCReSIS Welcomes Three New Staff Members

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Twin Otter Flies in Greenland, Continued on Page 5

A team of scientists and engineers stuck in an isolated, snowed-in hotel in remote Greenland. Their eyes are glued to their computer screens and they are fervently trying to analyze something. It sounds like the plot of a science fiction horror film – John Carpenter’s The Thing on the other end of the world. But on their March 15 to May 6 expedition to Greenland, the Twin Otter team was all science, no fiction.

“We were trying to determine the thickness of the ice in several of Greenland’s fastest flowing glaciers,” said Logan Smith, a graduate student in charge of on-site data processing during the mission.

Operating out of Ilulissat, Kulusuk, and Nuuk, the CReSIS team, led by Fernando Rodriguez-Morales, flew lines targeting Jakobshavn Fjord, the Helheim and South East Glaciers, and the Nuuk Glacier. On board the Twin Otter, CReSIS engineers utilized the MCoRDS ground-penetrating radar, an accumulation radar, and the Ku-band altimeter.

“These are the most significant outlet glaciers, which are the main tributaries for getting ice from the interior of Greenland to the calving front, or out to the edges where it breaks off and eventually leads to a rise in sea level,” Smith said.

Rodriguez-Morales said that Jakobshavn, one of the fastest-moving glaciers in the world, has long been a focal point of scientific interest. The CReSIS team completed a number of radar improvements to better accomplish the tricky task of accurately sounding the bottom of the ice sheet and avoiding surface clutter. The depth sounder operated at 195 MHz, as opposed to the 150 MHz frequency of years past. The scientists and engineers on the mission also decreased the size of the antennas to accommodate a change in antenna array on the plane.

The Twin Otter operated with six elements per wing, but the size decrease allowed CReSIS engineers to rotate the elements 90 degrees. “Now they’re perpendicular,” Rodriguez-Morales said. “They used to be in the direction of travel. It helps to minimize clutter.”

Fieldwork always involves trial and error and unexpected setbacks, and it relies heavily on the ingenuity and improvisational skills of the involved scientists. With a new system operating at a new frequency, the Twin Otter team faced an unexpected source of interference: the strobe lights on the tips of the aircraft’s wings. An interfering signal masks the signal the researchers are trying to detect, which is quite weak. Normal sources of interference come from inside the plane. As researchers examine the data from each antenna, they usually see the interfering signal decrease as they move away from the

Twin Otter Flies in Greenland// BY NICK MOTT

2011: Twin Otter on the ground in Greenland.Photo by Daniel Gomez-Garcia.

2Newsletter // The Ice Breaker // Summer 2011www.cresis.ku.edu

Six years in the works, the UAV will make its first flight over the horizon during the mission. “We have not left line of sight before,” said Dr. Rick Hale, head of the UAV team. “Once the ground pilots can’t see it there’s no way to recover other than with the on-board intelligence systems – so whether you’re two kilometers or two hundred kilometers out, I guess you could argue you’re in the same safety mode.” The Meridian will fly within 25-50 kilometers of base camp at NEEM.

Although the Meridian has already undergone test flights in Antarctica and on a military base in Utah, CReSIS engineers have not yet had a chance to test the efficacy of the radar on the UAV. The Meridian radar, used as a depth-sounding radar, is a one-channel system which transmits on four antennas and receives on four antennas. “Hopefully we’ll send the aircraft out to its limits and get some good data from the radar,” said flight test engineer Ryan Lykins.

This trip will also serve as the first opportunity to test the operation of the UAV off of skis. “We’ve operated off grass, we’ve operated off pavement, we’ve operated off ice, but not off soft snow,” Hale said. The pilot, clutching a large RC joystick – an RC car-obsessed child’s dream –

CReSIS Team to Test UAV in Greenland

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE FOR UNDERGRADUATES

Research Experience at CReSIS

To learn more about the 2011 REU students, please visit: https://www.cresis.ku.edu/education/undergraduate/reu-program/2011

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE FOR TEACHERSFor two summer months every year, the National Science Foundation-funded CReSIS Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program brings students from diversified backgrounds and diverse locations to the University of Kansas (KU) and the Center’s partner institutions. The purpose of the program is to provide undergraduate students in science and engineering with invaluable opportunities to gain research experience by working with faculty mentors who are actively involved in the Center’s research activities.

This summer, 34 students were selected for the REU program. Nine students are working at KU, 11 students each are working at Indiana University and Elizabeth City State University (ECSU), and two students are working at the University of Washington. In addition, two students from Accra, Ghana, have been selected through an REU grant from the U. S. Navy, and they will perform their research activities at both KU and ECSU.

The CReSIS Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program has been a new undertaking in 2011 that brought pre-service teachers to the Center for two summer months. The goal for this program is to introduce its participants to some of the research activities at CReSIS and help them prepare materials for classroom teaching. This summer, two RET students have joined the CReSIS team.

To learn more about the 2011 RET students, please visit: https://www.cresis.ku.edu/education/k-12/teacher-workshops/ret-program

// BY NICK MOTT

// BY SHAWN SCHALLER

Out in North Lawrence, past the Teepee, “purveyors of potables and edibles”, past the one-and-only “authentic” Jellystone Park, the Airport Motel, and seemingly endless Kansas fields, past even Don’s Diesel and a retro silver camper, sits a hidden-away hangar. On any given day, one can easily spot a Valkyrie motorcycle, a gleaming yellow corvette, an old hot rod. Here, however, it is engines and flight that matter. And it is here, in the KU Aerospace Engineering Hangar, that the Meridian UAV, or unpiloted aerial vehicle, received its final preparations before departing for its July 15 - August 15 test flights at the NEEM camp in Greenland.

controls the plane as it takes off and lands. When it reaches altitude, the pilot turns the control over to autopilot. Flight test engineers at computer terminals fine tune the flight path with GPS Waypoint Navigation.

What the trip really boils down to, Hale said, “is some aircraft system checks, some radar system checks, and then some integrated platform science checks.” At NEEM, Hale said that he hopes to get in “as many flights as humanly possible.” The final number of flights, though, ultimately depends on the weather.

Other sensors and aircraft at CReSIS offer high-altitude, long-range, and long-endurance capabilities, but lack some degree of maneuverability. “They take wide passes,” Hale said. “They’re good for interior ice and for wide spacing arrays.” Smaller, unmanned vehicles like the Meridian, though, are particularly suited for outlet glaciers. No pilot means less limitations and more fuel-efficiency. “We’re very maneuverable. Theoretically what we can do is the very fine surveys around the perimeters.”

“Right now we’ve been busy getting the aircraft ready,” Lykins said. “We went to Utah back in April to do flight tests, and since we’ve returned we’ve done a lot of rewiring the aircraft. Yesterday we did an engine test with the radar installed to test for any EMI (Electromagnetic Interference).” Before departure, team members have to focus on packing, and, due to the remote location of the NEEM camp, making sure all necessary items are ready to go.

Total flight time of UAV missions in previous years amounts to only a few total hours. “Ideally we’ll dwarf the total flight time of the aircraft in this mission,” Hale said.

During the next five years of development, the UAV team will work on fine-tuning the aircraft. Hale and Lykins said that engineers will be hard at work developing an increasingly autonomous radar system, and that they hope to cut the total crew number with every deployment.

3Newsletter // The Ice Breaker // Summer 2011www.cresis.ku.edu

Ghana REU Students Relish Time in CReSIS, America

Accra, Ghana is approximately 6,253 miles away from Lawrence, Kan. To put it in CReSIS terms, that’s roughly equivalent to a round trip from CReSIS headquarters in Lawrence, Kansas to Jakobshavn Glacier, Greenland, and then some.

For Rockson Armaah and Ignatius Williams, this meant an 11.5 hour flight from Accra to Atlanta and a subsequent 1.3 hour flight from Atlanta to Kansas City. After a two-hour wait at the airport and an hour-long bus ride, the two Ghana-ian students finally arrived in Lawrence, Kan.

Williams and Armaah, a senior and junior studying Oceanography and Fisheries, respectively, at the University of Ghana, made the long trip to the American Midwest to par-ticipate in the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at CReSIS. The two students spent three weeks at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and four more weeks at Elizabeth City State University in Elizabeth City, N.C.

Armaah said that originally, he and Williams were sched-uled to receive their introduction to the program at Elizabeth City State University in Elizabeth City, N.C. However, the final exam schedule at the University of Ghana in Accra de-layed their departure and instead of stopping at ECSU for the program introduction, Armaah and Williams came straight to Lawrence. As with their lengthy flights and waits, the Gha-naian students simply took this unexpected change of plans in stride.

Staying in Hashinger Hall and working next to the other REU students, Williams said, led to a lot of quality extra-curricular learning experiences. Bowling, Worlds of Fun, and fine collegiate dormitory dining were but a few of the American cultural

experiences that Williams and Armaah enjoyed as part of the program.Then, after a three-week introduction to different remote sensing-re-

lated topics, Matlab software training, and Polycom conferences with Mr. Je’aime Powell, their program mentor, Williams and Armaah boarded a plane for North Carolina.

There, they were introduced personally to Powell, completed their per-sonal websites, and undertook a remote sensing-based ground truth veri-fication project. Mr. Powell helped them make the most of their free time in N.C. as well.

“Actually we got in these go-karts and raced,” Williams said, remem-bering Armaah and his first experiences with Powell, “so he was actually really fun!” Back at CReSIS, Williams said that Powell was flexible, fun, and easy to be with while working, too.

Armaah and Williams were extremely grateful for the opportunity to work with Powell and with CReSIS. Both said that they were able to sig-nificantly broaden their scope of knowledge in terms of remote sensing. For Williams, the opportunity to sharpen the specific skills he’ll use for his thesis was particularly important.

The Ghanaian students’ favorite parts of the program were the people. “We wish would come back to KU and say bye to our wonderful folks,” said Armaah.

Williams is already a step further. “I’m actually thinking about coming back,” Williams said, but next time it would be just “for fun.”

Rockson Armaah

Ignatius Will iams

// BY SHAWN SCHALLER

4Newsletter // The Ice Breaker // Summer 2011www.cresis.ku.edu

PNAS Publication Highlights CReSIS Researcher’s Accomplishment

Stephen Price’s paper “Committed sea-level rise for the next century from Greenland ice sheet dynamics during the past decade,” was published in the May 17, 2011 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). Dr. Price, a scientist with the Fluid Dy-namics and Solid Mechanics Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is also an active CReSIS partner.

“Relieved,” was the only word Price found to describe his feelings on his accomplishment. “We’ve been trying to get the… results from this paper published for a while now but had prob-lems even getting the editors to send it out for review.”

Whether he admits it or not, Price should also be proud of both his paper’s content and its suc-cess. According to the PNAS website, the serial is one of the most heavily-cited scientific journals in the world

In Price’s defense, a certain amount of relief is due as well. He and his associates, Anthony Payne, Ian Howat and Ben Smith, had worked on this particular bit of research and the resulting paper for more than a year.

CReSIS researcher Steve Price, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, recently had his paper on the Greenland ice sheet published in the PNAS scientific serial.

U.S. News & World Report determines its col-legiate rankings using standard indicators such as graduation and retention rates and faculty strength. An additional qualifying criterion set for the regional college rankings is that each school awards fewer than half its degrees to non-liberal arts disciplines.

“ECSU was that nurturing institution of 1500 students that prepared me for life, society, and my career,” ECSU education program manager and CReSIS staff member Darnell Johnson said of his feelings on his alma mater’s recognition. “What a thrill!”

ECSU Among the Nation’s Best Institutions

“We still have a long way to go be-fore we have rigorous predictions from improved ice sheet models,” said Price on the overall outlook of his paper. “But… those models are coming along and can provide some useful insight now.”

According to an article entitled “Green-land ice in no hurry to raise seas” by New Scientist environment reporter Michael Marshall, Price’s precise modeling of the Greenland ice sheet allowed him to make a more physically based prediction of Green-land’s potential contribution to future sea level. Price’s prediction for sea-level rise from changes in the flow of Greenland’s outlet glaciers is approximately 1/2 of a widely cited previous prediction, which fo-cused on estimating an upper bound for sea level rise by the year 2100.

In his paper’s abstract, Price says that he and his partners’ three-dimensional model of the Greenland ice sheet precisely simulates the ice sheet’s mass losses dur-ing the past decade. The model then proj-ects the simulation through the remainder of the century, producing an estimate for the ice sheet’s minumum contribution to future sea level rise.

// BY SHAWN SCHALLER

// BY SHAWN SCHALLER

Elizabeth City, N.C.: CReSIS partner institution, Elizabeth City State Uni-versity (ECSU), was recently ranked America’s No. 2 public college in the South region and the No. 17 Historical-ly Black College of 2011 by U.S. News & World Report.

Prestigious distinctions are nothing new to Johnson and ECSU. In 2010, the Wash-ington Monthly ranked the university No. 11 among all baccalaureate institutions in America, missing the top 10 by a fraction of a point. The publication’s unique scoring system awarded the No. 10 spot to Benedict College of South Carolina instead.

Johnson primarily credited the achieve-ment to ECSU’s involvement in the North Carolina Tomorrow Initiative. The initiative’s purpose, Johnson said, is to discover how the school can appropriately respond to twenty-first century challenges facing its students, the state of North Carolina, and the entire nation. This goal will be met by effectively fulfilling three individual missions: teaching, scholarship and research, and public service. Johnson said the organization shapes and guides current and future university priorities,

thereby contributing to its sustained success.Unfortunately, the ECSU family doesn’t

have much time to sit back and admire its own accomplishments. Though proud of the recognition, Johnson’s focus was fixed on the future. For Johnson, sustaining and building on such tremendous success all boils down to a single factor, one that happens to be an ECSU specialty.

“ECSU administrators, faculty, and staff will continue to maintain a family atmo-sphere,” Johnson said. “It has been stated by many, ‘Students don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.’”

With a staff so passionate and devoted to its university’s success, the sky is the limit for ECSU. Greater feats, and even higher rank-ings, are certainly within reach for this presti-gious institution.

5Newsletter // The Ice Breaker // Summer 2011www.cresis.ku.edu

Twin Otter Flies in GreenlandContinued from Page 1

plane. In this case, though, the opposite occurred: the interference was strongest next to the tip of the wing. The problem temporarily perplexed those involved, but CReSIS’ talented team quickly discovered the source of the issue. “It was nice because it was a pretty easy fix,” Smith said.

During the mission, the weather also served as a source of frustration. “This year it’s been worse than ever,” Rodriguez-Morales said. “People who have been going there for 20 years, even they said it was the worst they’d ever seen.” Often, the CReSIS team would be awake and ready to fly for the day at six or seven in the morning, only to find that the weather prevented any flights at all. “It can be frustrating at times. But that also makes it really exciting when you actually get to go out and fly,” Smith said.

The team faced the worst of weather in Kulusuk, operating out of a tiny hotel more than a mile from the nearest village. “In Nuuk we were able to do everything in three days. You can compare that to Kulusuk, where it took us three weeks,” said Daniel Gomez, a

graduate student and radar engineer on the mission. “But it’s an experience we enjoyed. We had time in Kulusuk to actually develop some other software for both the Ku-band and accumulation radars.”

Smith said that though they had to trek through a mile-and-a-half of several feet of snow to reach town, the team made the journey more than once. “It’s very interesting to see new cultures,” he said. “It was one of the more unchanged forms of the native Greenlandic people, how they would’ve lived more so than some of the bigger cities where we were.”

The group dynamics of the scientists on the mission helped the team get through the often burdensome effects of the weather. “Sometimes you can get some cabin fever if the weather’s bad enough that you can’t get outside for a few days,” Smith said. “But the people that I was there with were all really great, so there was really no internal conflict within the group.”

Despite the weather, the Twin Otter team was able to get in just over a dozen flights. “It

was very encouraging that we got all those flights in, given the weather conditions. I think we’ve still got a lot of work to do with the data. So it’s tough to say just yet, but it felt like we put in a lot of hard work in the field, and I hope it’s rewarded with some conclusive results,” Smith said.

Although it’s impossible to make a comparison in all cases, and some data requires advanced processing techniques, Rodriguez-Morales said that he saw a clear improvement in some of the data.

“What we’re trying to achieve is always to get better results than previous years, and there’s a lot of things that we have improved,” said Gomez.

Rodriguez-Morales said that there is always a need for new, better data and repeated paths for the sake of comparison. A return trip is scheduled for 2013. In the meantime, the CReSIS team will be working on the miniaturization of instruments to enable longer flights on smaller planes.

P-3 Antenna Array Changes Produce Faster, Clearer Results// BY SHAWN SCHALLER

Image courtesy of Rick Hale: New antenna arrays line the underside of the P-3 aircraft

Two and a half months later, in the middle of May, the P-3 team returned to CReSIS with a bevy of positive results. Discussing the data produced by the deployment brought a smile of relief to CReSIS Deputy Director Carl Leuschen’s face, as the testing phase of new elements and

Before CReSIS embarked on its 2011 field season, a few adjustments had to be made. For the P-3 aircraft, this meant major structural and elec-trical changes to the radar depth sounder system and the antenna arrays. In early March, the CReSIS team began field operations on the P-3: first in test flights out of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and then on to Greenland and Alas-ka for science flights. The CReSIS team joined with four other instru-ment teams operating two LIDARs, a gravimeter, a magnetometer, and a cartographic camera sensor in ad-dition to CReSIS’ four radars.

upgrades can be an uncertain, stressful time. Ultimately, Leuschen said that he was pleased and that the mission was “very successful.”

P-3 Antenna Array Changes Produce Faster, Clearer Results, Continued on Page 7

6Newsletter // The Ice Breaker // Summer 2011www.cresis.ku.edu

Byrd Glacier is one of the largest glaciers in Antarctica – 20 km wide and 200 km long – and transports ice from the interior of East Antarctica into the Ross Ice Shelf. Despite its size and po-tential sea level contribution, relatively little is known about it. The general consensus was that Byrd, like many East Antarctic glaciers, was slow, boring and not worth the scientific scrutiny.

Through detailed remote sensing work, we showed that Byrd Glacier is actually more dynamic than originally thought. Our data showed that the whole glacier accelerated more than 10 percent over a 6-10 month interval in 2006. This speed-up oc-curred right after two subglacial lakes in the catchment of Byrd drained; water from these lakes likely drained along the ice-bed boundary of Byrd Glacier, lubricating it and causing acceleration.

Byrd Glacier’s sensitivity to subglacial water brought renewed interest and funding support. Only one other field team has ever conducted field measurements on Byrd (in the 1970s), and satel-lite coverage, while covering a large spatial area, fails to capture the fine-scale changes in ice motion (most velocities derived from satellite imagery are averaged over several months – the time separation between two usable cloud-free images). Our current NSF project focuses on understanding the small-scale changes that Byrd undergoes – whether due to tides, subglacial water, or ocean circulation – and how these changes in ice flow propagate

Unraveling Byrd Glacier

I first started studying Byrd Glacier almost 10 years ago as a new PhD student at the University of Maine. I was using a new suite of NASA satel-lite imagery, capable of imaging farther south than previous sensors, to derive ice velocities. Byrd Gla-cier was my first guinea pig, and I spent almost 18 months pouring over images, trying to develop the methodology that would allow us to quantify how fast the glacier flows using repeat imagery.

up the glacier. Only when we understand the physical pro-cesses that control how fast Byrd Glacier flows can we model how it will behave in a warming climate.

In November, our field team of six (two graduate students, two professional mountaineers, and two lead scientists -- myself and my PhD advisor) headed to Ant-arctica to deploy 28 GPS units on and around Byrd Glacier. The GPS receivers are secured to the ice with metal poles, and they record the precise position of these poles every five seconds. Most (21) of the instruments were “sum-mer-only” GPS units and stayed on the glacier from November to February; these units were relatively small and

November 2010: Leigh Stearns and Kristi Schild wiring the GPS unit and battery pack.Photo by Peter Braddock.

November 2010: A serac rising over the surface of Byrd Glacier.Photo by Brandon Gillette.

light (~75 lbs) and were charged with one 40-watt solar panel. Although logistically much more difficult, we also want to know how the glacier be-haves throughout the winter. We deployed seven units that will (hopefully) record data all year long; three of these are on the trunk of the glacier, two are over the subglacial lakes, and two are on bedrock (our base stations). Each of these units has several 50 or 80-watt solar panels, wind turbines, and 10 car batteries; the total weight of each ‘winter-over’ unit is over 1,000 lbs (not including all the gear needed to install them). Despite their skepticism and disbelief, the pilots and logistics coordinators in Antarctica provided wonderful support, and we managed to get all this gear out to the glacier.I imagine (honestly, I don’t know!) that seeing Byrd Glacier for the first time is akin to internet dating. I had studied every feature with satellite imagery in such detail and with such familiarity that I felt I knew Byrd inti-mately. But, when we got there, I was surprised – the adjacent cliffs were more precipitous and colorful with red and grey metamorphic rocks; the glacier surface, with crevasses that looked so organized in imagery, was chaotic and rough; and the enormity of the glacier, which seemed so man-ageable on my computer screen, was hard to grasp.

Despite our fair share of weather delays, unbearably cold winds, faulty cables, dead batteries, and constraints on both fuel and the pilots’ time, we successfully deployed and retrieved almost all of the GPS units. Seven ‘winter-over’ units are still out there, hopefully resilient to the strong ka-tabatic winds and recording data right now. We’ll find out how they fared when we return next November. In the meantime, we’ll be busy processing GPS data and new high-resolution imagery to try to unravel what makes Byrd Glacier tick.

// BY LEIGH STEARNS

7Newsletter // The Ice Breaker // Summer 2011www.cresis.ku.edu

CReSIS Welcomes Three New Staff Members

Kuang-Chen Hsu joined CReSIS in June 2011 as the Adobe Flash Developer. Hsu, who most recently received Master’s Degree from Bowling Green State University in Ohio, is working toward earning his Ph.D. in Education Technology from the University of Kansas. In his free time, he enjoys traveling and watching sports. While at CReSIS, he hopes to learn how to use digital technology to design E-learning content and develop a design curriculum.

Amie Vo joined CReSIS in June 2011 as a Student Assistant Administrator. She is set to graduate from the University of Kansas in 2013 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science. Beyond her rigor-ous work and school schedules, Vo is also the president of the University of Kansas Kendo Club. While at CReSIS, she hopes to gain more knowledge of the cutting edge technology and research presented by the Center, as well as find ways to contribute to it.

Erin Zingré joined CReSIS the Graphic Designer in May 2011. Ms. Zingré, a native of Fort Scott, Kan., is set to graduate from the University of Kansas in the spring of 2013 with Bachelor’s Degrees in Art History and Graphic Design and an Associate’s Degree in French. When not studying or working at CReSIS, she works as a freelance designer, plays the cello in an indie rock band called Panda Circus, and teaches cello to grade school students. While at CReSIS, she intends to gain work experience and utilize all her graphic design knowledge to promote the CReSIS cause.

// BY SHAWN SCHALLER

In summary, the changes made to the radar sys-tem and P-3 antenna arrays allow CReSIS to re-ceive the clearest data ever received and to pro-duce results in a much shorter time frame than was previously possible.

According to Electrical Engineering and Com-puter Science professor Fernando Rodriguez-Morales, the upgrades reduced Radio Frequency Interference (RFI), optimized radar settings dur-ing sea-ice flights, and utilized new data process-ing software to produce ‘quick-look’ results for accelerated echogram production.

Many of the upgrades were directly connect-ed to the physical structures and mounting sys-tems of the antenna arrays. In order to increase sensitivity, members of the University of Kansas’ Aerospace Engineering and Electrical Engineer-ing and Computer Science departments worked together to replace the metal elements within the antennas and mounting systems.

The changes to the antenna array on the P-3 aircraft were a completion of work that began the previous year. Fifteen total elements were installed, nearly doubling the total of eight ele-ments previously attached to the aircraft’s belly.

According to Leuschen, four different instru-ments operated on the aircraft: the Radar Depth Sounder, the Snow Radar, the Ku Band-Altim-eter, and the Accumulation Radar. Rodriguez-Morales added that the P-3 radar depth sounder also utilized the newly-developed 16-channel receiver system so that all fifteen antenna ele-ments could be monitored simultaneously (with a spare).

Prior to the Greenland deployment, the P-3 underwent numerous simulations and tests to ensure that the improved antenna arrays could produce quality data amid the rigors of cling-ing to the underside of an aircraft in flight. The antennas were tested for consistency through

variations in air flow, vibrations, and the force pressing upon the structures.

During the Greenland deployment, it was quickly apparent that all the hard work the P-3 team logged during the winter months paid off in full. According to Rodriguez-Morales, Opera-tion IceBridge Project Scientist Michael Studinger said that some of the results produced directly in the field were “the coolest radar images [he’s] seen of the Greenland Ice Sheet.”

As for his own opinion, Rodriguez-Morales was also pleased with the results, saying that they were certainly as good as expected. How-ever, he was even happier with the work of the P-3 team throughout the mission.

“This mission was a success,” Rodriguez-Morales said, “thanks to the excellent work ef-fort from our technical team.”

P-3 Antenna Array Changes Produce Faster, Clearer ResultsContinued from Page 5

>> Editors J. Collins

>> Design and Layout E. Zingré

>> Staff Writers N. Mott & S. Schaller

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