Do you like exotic places? Are you interested in science? Or are you concerned about global warming? If the answer to any one of these is a “Yes”, NASA has got something for you – The Operation Ice Bridge.

According to NASA, “this new NASA mission is the largest airborne survey of polar ice ever flown. It is also the most sophisticated, using the latest scientific instruments to give an unprecedented three-dimensional view of the ice sheets, floating ice shelves, and sea ice of both the Arctic and Antarctic…..the mission begins its new expedition: flying over western Antarctica in NASA’s DC-8 starting in October. The base of operations is Punta Arenas, Chile, at the very southern end of South America”. The introduction video can be found here.

The part I liked most are the tweets from aboard the DC-8 flight. Here is a sample -“Over Pine Island Bay … See icebergs in the dark blue water below, and milky-looking “grease ice.” They have also been posting some amazing pictures like this- http://twitpic.com/m31ru. With these tweets, blogs and YouTube videos, NASA is doing a good job of conveying its work to the outside world.

If you are interested in learning what the team is doing, you can follow it at http://twitter.com/IceBridge. 

PS:Here is a short nice video about why we should be concerned about the melting of ice caps in Antarctica.