Why brave the cold and ice in person if satellites can do the job from space?
The answer is that ground observations are needed to check the accuracy of satellite measurements. Also, some tasks are impossible to accomplish from space. These include drilling into ice to measure its thickness or to study the bedrock below. Bindschadler says that viewing ice from space and then from the ground is “a bit like seeing a fly with your eyes, wondering how it sees and flies, getting some ideas, but then having to look at it under a microscope to check out your ideas.” What’s next for Bindschadler? He’s planning to go to Antarctica’s Pine Island Ice Shelf. He says it would be “the most dangerous place I’ve ever worked.” The ice shelf has lots of crevasses — deep cracks in the ice — and little room to land an airplane or set up camp. The risks would be worth the reward, according to Bindschadler. His team would melt a hole five inches in diameter through the 500-meter-thick ice shelf. Then, the team would drop down sensors to monitor the water below. The data collected c
