IceBridge and South Pole Salutes Veterans Day

This photograph of the NASA DC-8 contrail was taken from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station on November 4, 2010. It was the first time the DC-8 had ever flown over the South Pole. The aircraft was carrying NASA’s Operation IceBridge crew and science instruments on an arc around the pole, collecting laser altimetry data to improve calibration of the dataset collected by NASA’s ICESat satellite. A camera inside the aircraft looking out through an optical port captured this photograph of the station from above. Operation IceBridge took a second flight over the station on November 10, 2010. Detailed descriptions and additional photographs from both South Pole flights are on the IceBridge blog at http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/icebridge. Credit: David Pablo Cohn, South Pole IT Helpdesk