Under its Operation IceBridge, NASA captured a photo of a very sharp-angled, tabular iceberg floating among sea ice in the Antarctic Peninsula, on 16 October 2018.
Operation IceBridge is NASA’s longest-running aerial survey of polar ice, designed to assess changes in the ice height of several glaciers draining into the Larsen A, B and C embayments. During the survey, IceBridge senior support scientist Jeremy Harbeck spotted the iceberg just off of the Larsen C ice shelf.
I thought it was pretty interesting; I often see icebergs with relatively straight edges, but I’ve not really seen one before with two corners at such right angles like this one had,
…said NASA’s Jeremy Harbeck who captured the photo.
The rectangular iceberg appeared to be freshly calved from Larsen C, which in July 2017 released the massive A68 iceberg, a chunk of ice about the size of the state of Delaware.
In a different photo, Harbeck captured both the edge of the now-famous iceberg, and a slightly less rectangular iceberg. That image also captures A68 in the distance.
I was actually more interested in capturing the A68 iceberg that we were about to fly over, but I thought this rectangular iceberg was visually interesting and fairly photogenic, so on a lark, I just took a couple photos,
…said Harbeck.
The flight originated from Punta Arenas, Chile, as part of a five-week-long IceBridge deployment, which began 10 October and is scheduled to conclude on 18 November.
