I stayed awake for a majority of the 6 hour overnight flight from Baltimore, Maryland to Pituffik Space Base, anxious for the moment I would get to see the Arctic and Greenland Ice Sheet for the fi…| Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab
Greetings from the Top of the World! I’m Jorge Coppin-Massanet, a PhD student with the Cornell/NASA SSHOW UP team. My research focuses on developing advanced instrumentation for exploring icy…| Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab
View the full article in Nature In late 2019 and early 2020, the MELT team took Icefin beneath Thwaites Glacier (sometimes unfortunately referred to as the Doomsday Glacier). Thwaites is the size of the U.S. state of Florida (or about the size of Great Britain), and is one of the most rapidly changing glaciers on … Continue reading Nature: Heterogeneous melting near the Thwaites Glacier grounding line→| Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab
Pingo STARR is a NASA-funded program exploring ice-cored hills in the Arctic Tundra called pingos. These hills form from freezing ground water, forming a massive ice mound at the center and uplifting the permafrost. Not only are they found on Earth, but there is strong evidence that they also form on Mars and on the … Continue reading Pingo STARR: 2021 Mid-Field Season Update→| Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab
Pingo SubTerranean Aquifer Reconnaissance & Reconstruction (Pingo STARR) is a NASA- funded research & analysis program grant supported through the innovative Planetary Science and Technology for Analog Research (PSTAR) program.| Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab
The Last Observations of the Dawn mission to Ceres show tantalizing evidence the dwarf planet bears striking similarity with Earth and Mars. Pingos on Ceres are the focus of one of seven new papers based on data from NASA's Dawn mission.| Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab
Icefin is an underwater oceanographer robot with projects funded by the likes of NASA and the National Science Foundation, and helps scientists explore ice-covered oceans. Icefin may be the inspiration for future trips to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, which is a key target on NASA’s list for ocean world exploration that could potentially harbor life. … Continue reading 5 reasons Icefin should be your new favorite robot→| Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab
Thwaites FAQ: On May 21, 2020, PI and Icefin Lead Scientist Dr. Britney Schmidt participated in a Twitter Q&A session with Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and answered some of your most frequently asked questions about Thwaites and Icefin as part of the #ThwaitesGlacierChat. If you’re new to Thwaites and/or Icefin, this is a great … Continue reading We can’t Th(wait)es to answer your FAQ about Thwaites and Icefin!→| Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab
It’s an unprecedented time for everyone, including the scientists and engineers who work on Icefin. Being away from our labs and workstations means the Icefin team members have to get creative with remote-sciencing to keep things moving forward in the time of Covid-19. For some, that means engineering complex electronics on a fold-out table, for … Continue reading We may be social distancing, but the Icefin team is still #RemoteSciencing→| Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab
Curious about the scientific instruments Icefin has to help it do groundbreaking (and ice-breaking!) field work? From salinity and temperature readings, to seafloor imaging and sonar mapping, Icefin has a collection of instruments that help scientists look at all kinds of things under the ice. Here, we’ll talk about Icefin’s Oculus sonar from Blueprint Subsea, … Continue reading Tech Spotlight: Oculus Sonar→| Planetary Habitability and Technology Lab