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When it came time to investigate the crack, Brockett flew across it before turning to fly along the rift by sight. Veteran DC-8 pilot Bill Brockett first flew the day's designed mission, crisscrossing the flow of the glacier near the grounding line to gather data on its elevation, topography and thickness. IceBridge scientists returned soon after to make the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving in progress. This crack, which extends at least 18 miles and is 50 meters deep, could produce an iceberg more than 800 square kilometers in size. In October, 2011, NASA's Operation IceBridge discovered a major rift in the Pine Island Glacier in western Antarctica. It is likely that once the iceberg floats away, the leading edge of the ice shelf will have receded farther than at any time since its location was first recorded in the 1940s. Radar measurements suggested the ice shelf in the region of the rift is about 1,640 feet (500 meters) feet thick, with only about 160 feet of that floating above water and the rest submerged.

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When the iceberg breaks free it will cover about 340 square miles (880 square kilometers) of surface area. The deepest points from the ice shelf surface ranged 165 to 195 feet (50 to 60 meters). The lidar instrument on the DC-8, the Airborne Topographic Mapper, measured the rift's shoulders about 820 feet apart (250 meters) at its widest, although the rift stretched about 260 feet wide along most of the crack.

The IceBridge team observed the rift running across the ice shelf for about 18 miles. 26 flight, if only for a 30-minute diversion from the day's prescribed flight lines. But discovering a developing rift in one of the most significant science targets in the world of glaciology offered a brief change in agenda for the Oct. To my knowledge, no one has flown a lidar instrument over an actively developing rift such as this.'ДЄ primary goal of Operation IceBridge is to put the same instruments over the exact same flight lines and satellite tracks, year after year, to gather meaningful and accurate data of how ice sheets and glaciers are changing over time. 'It's part of a natural process but it's pretty exciting to be here and actually observe it while it happens. 'We are actually now witnessing how it happens and it's very exciting for us,' said IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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As ice pushes toward the sea from the interior, inevitably the ice shelf will crack and send a large iceberg free. A floating tongue of ice reaches out 30 miles into the Amundsen beyond the grounding line, the below-sea-level point where the ice shelf locks onto the continental bedrock. Gravity pulls the ice in the glacier westward along Antarctica's Hudson Mountains toward the Amundsen Sea. While Pine Island has scientists' attention because it is both big and unstable вЂ“ scientists call it the largest source of uncertainty in global sea level rise projections вЂ“ the calving underway now is part of a natural process for a glacier that terminates in open water. Since then, a more detailed look back at satellite imagery seems to show the first signs of the crack in early October. 14 IceBridge flight of NASA's DC-8, no one had seen any evidence of the ice shelf beginning to break apart. Pine Island Glacier last calved a significant iceberg in 2001, and some scientists have speculated recently that it was primed to calve again.

The six-year mission will yield an unprecedented three-dimensional view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice. NASA's Operation Ice Bridge, the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown, is in the midst of its third field campaign from Punta Arenas, Chile. PUNTA ARENAS, CHILE вЂ“ After discovering an emerging crack that cuts across the floating ice shelf of Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, NASA's Operation IceBridge has flown a follow-up mission and made the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving in progress.

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