NSIDC to manage data for NASA IceBridge mission
NASA has selected the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) to manage and distribute data for the IceBridge project, which will run from 2009 to 2015.
Operation IceBridge is a six-year NASA field campaign that will provide three-dimensional information about ice sheets, ice shelves, and sea ice in the Earth's polar regions. The mission was designed to collect data during a gap between two satellites, which measure land and ice surface elevations. The first ICESat satellite was launched in 2003 and is expected to conclude in 2010. A second ICESat mission is scheduled to go into orbit in 2015. The IceBridge mission will also take advantage of its airborne platforms to make additional geophysical measurements, including gravity mapping and radar sounding of ice and snow depth. These measurements will provide important information about the landforms hidden beneath ice sheets and glaciers, and changes in ice volume.
NSIDC will archive and distribute the data collected during the IceBridge mission. NSIDC will also coordinate the development of new synthesized products that combine single data sources to enable use by an expanding scientific community.
NSIDC is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The center manages and distributes scientific data, creates tools for data access, supports data users, performs scientific research, and educates the public about the cryosphere.
For more information about NSIDC, visit our Web site at http://nsidc.org.
To learn more about IceBridge mission planning, visit the Operation IceBridge Web site: http://www.espo.nasa.gov/oib/.
To learn about data management for IceBridge, see the NSIDC IceBridge Web site: http://nsidc.org/data/icebridge/index.html.
For more information, contact email@example.com or +1 303.492.1497.