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[music] NASA's P-3 research aircraft

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has landed in Thule, Greenland, and Operation IceBridge is ready to

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kick off its 2013 Arctic campaign. Only an eight-hour flight

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heading almost due north from the Virginia coast, Thule can feel like another planet,

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even without the occasional 60-mile-an-hour windstorm.

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But this year, the team was welcomed by sunny skies

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and surprisingly warm 40-degree temperatures and is ready to take off on its

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first science flight of the year. But let's step back.

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An IceBridge campaign doesn't actually begin here. The planning for the mission

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goes back months, when scientists met to hash out this year's objectives.

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Many different flight plans were on the table. Some focused on sea ice,

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some on outlet glaciers, and some on Greenland's ice sheets.

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Because the total flight hours in a campaign are strictly limited, it

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becomes a competitive process, where only the most valuable flight plans

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rise to the top. SCIENTIST: ... we agreed earlier that our strategy was to be

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that at a threshold, at least this area would get covered every year.

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About two or three weeks before deploying to Greenland, the IceBridge

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team began to integrate the radars, laser altimiters,

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and other instruments onto the aircraft, at NASA Goddard's Wallops Flight Facility

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in Virginia. It's only then, and after a few calibration flights

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to ensure everything looks good, does an IceBridge campaign truly begin.

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For the next few weeks,

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IceBridge will be flying missions out of Thule, to study sea ice in the Arctic ocean,