May 29, 2007
NASA EMBARKS ON CUTTING-EDGE
POLAR
EXPLORATION AND RESEARCH
NASA
has
selected 33 new scientific investigations to a fund that will advance
interdisciplinary studies of Earth's polar
regions
and the objectives of the International Polar Year (IPY). The
three-year
projects, supported by NASA at an estimated total of $18 million, will
be
conducted by scientists and students at several NASA centers, U.S.
universities and other research institutions.
"NASA's focus in these IPY science projects is to understand how the
polar
regions interact with the rest of the planet – the physical,
chemical and
biological components of the Earth system," said Seelye Martin, NASA
cryospheric program manager. "A significant emphasis will be on the ice
and the polar cryosphere, but NASA's IPY activities will also delve
into the
surrounding oceans, the overlying atmosphere, the land surface and
polar
ecosystems."
In the spirit of exploration and discovery characteristic of previous
International
Polar Years, NASA is sponsoring a project to determine the total ice
flow out
of the Arctic Ocean, and will look at the effect of black carbon
deposits from
northern hemisphere industrial activity on arctic snow. Another project
will
investigate the building blocks of life found in the soils of the Antarctic
Dry Valleys,
using an identical instrument to that planned for deployment in the
Martian
north polar region by the NASA Phoenix mission, scheduled for launch
this
August.
NASA projects will also monitor air pollution from the observatory at Summit, Greenland; study how
changes in sea ice affect the
ocean ecosystem in the Bering Sea; and test an instrument that can
directly
measure the thicknesses of the Greenland
glaciers.
NASA
International Polar Year
Selection List:
https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/solicitations/summary.do?method=init&solId={9229C302-4B94-263B-290A-7F7F97BC0404}&path=past
NASA
and the International Polar Year:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/IPY/main/index.html
Writer:
Steve Cole, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
##
Contact:
Lynn Chandler
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
301-286-2806
This text is
derived from:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/IPY/main/PolarExploration.html
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