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army of 90 rubber duckies floating on meltwater inside the fastest
moving Greenland glacier are helping NASA study how the movement of
glaciers speeds up during summer, according to a Reuters report today.
The
duckies have "science experiment" and "reward" written on them in three
languages along with an email address to contact if found. None have
been reported yet, but this is a remote area off the west coast of
Greenland.
In
addition to the ducks, Alberto Behar of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory also sent a football-sized, floating robotic probe carrying
a GPS device, pressure sensor, thermometer and accelerometer to study
the inside of the glacier. The duckies and probe were lowered on a rope
into a moulin -- a hole in the glacier where meltwater rivers drop down
to the bottom of the glacier and lubricate the ice river's move towards
the ocean. You can think of them as ice-walled water slides. The
duckies and probe will float down river under the glacier and allow
researchers to get a better sense for what is underneath all that ice,
and where the meltwater comes out.
The
probe's accelerometers will be able to tell when the water is slowing
down or speeding up, indicating a waterfall, rapids or other features
inside the glacier. Behar, a space robotics designer, designed the
little probe as well as probes for many extreme environments including
Antarctic boreholes and deep sea hydrothermal vents that can reach up
to 700 degrees Fahrenheit.
The experiment is designed to shed
light on the mechanics of how these rivers of ice flow faster in the
summer. One theory is that the summer sun melts pools of water on the
surface that melt their way to the base of the glacier and form
moulins. The meltwater pouring down into them would then lubricate the
ice-rock interface and allow the ice to flow faster down to the ocean.
The
fast-moving Jakobshavn Glacier is a good place to start because it is
the source of nearly seven percent of the ice coming off Greenland. In
fact, Jakobshavn is thought to be the source of the infamous iceberg
that sank the Titanic in April 1912. Glaciers on land such as this one
will cause oceans to rise if it melts, which makes understanding and
tracking its movements all the more relevant to us.
https://blog. wired.com/ wiredscience/ 2008/09/nasa- deploys-ru. html