Tag: NASA

Arctic sea ice extent was at extremely low levels for much of the summer of 2020, setting new records every day during the month of July, at a time when current data reveals the year 2020 will be the warmest year on record.

According to a study issued by NASA, due the increase of the sea ice melt, a major ocean current in the Arctic is faster and more turbulent. Specifically, the current is part of a delicate Arctic area, which is now flooded with fresh water, following the impacts of the climate change.

An intrepid NASA robot with the aim to search for signs of alien life in the solar system has excelled in its first road-test in Antarctica. In fact, it is said that a team of researchers and engineers spent three weeks at Australia’s Casey research station, testing the robot under the Antarctic sea-ice.

Over the next few months, The Australian Antarctic Program will be collaborating with NASA in order to test an under-ice robot which may potentially be used in a space mission to look for signs of extra-terrestrial life. It is said that NASA engineers are already working on an underwater rover aspiring to tackle the challenges posed by ocean worlds like Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. The robot in particular is called Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration or BRUIE.

Arctic sea ice likely reached its 2019 minimum extent of 1.60 million square miles (4.15 million square kilometers) on 18 September, tied for second lowest summertime extent in the satellite record, according to data provided by NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Scientists from the US Navy have joined forces with NASA Johnson Space Center to take an Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD) technology, originally designed for diving, from seabed to space.

NASA's Langley Research Center released a video last week showing four large drones releasing over 100 smaller drones known as 'Cicadas', at the Beaver Dam Airpark in Virginia. Cicada, developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory, stands for "Close-in Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft."

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. The rectangular iceberg appeared to be freshly calved from Larsen C, which in July 2017 released the massive A68 iceberg.

NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite launched from California earlier in September, embarking on its mission to measure the ice of Earth’s frozen reaches 'with unprecedented accuracy'. With this mission, NASA seeks to explore remote polar regions in a bid to understand ice changes on Earth.

Arctic sea ice reached its annual maximum extent on March 17, and joined 2015, 2016 and 2017 as the four lowest maximum extents on record, according to scientists at the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA. In the video, Dr. Claire Parkinson explains how and why NASA studies Arctic sea ice.