Antarctica

July 17, 2008 -- A lone granite boulder found against all odds high atop a glacier in Antarctica may provide additional key evidence to support a theory that parts of the southernmost continent once were connected to North America hundreds of millions of years ago.

Writing in the July 11 edition of the journal Science, an international team of U.S. and Australian investigators describe their findings, which were made in the Transantarctic Mountains, and their significance to the problem of piecing together what an ancient supercontinent, called Rodinia, looked like. The U.S. investigators were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).    » read more »

15 January 2008 -- A group of climate researchers says there is evidence that global warming is causing the Antarctic ice cap to melt more quickly than it did 10 years ago.

The scientists said Monday they used satellite data to monitor the Antarctic coastline. They found the ice sheet on the Earth's southern pole lost 59 percent more ice in 2006 than it did in 1996.

The researchers say western Antarctica lost 132 billion tons of ice in 2006, enough to raise worldwide sea levels by 0.5 millimeter.    » read more »

Nov. 27, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - A team of researchers from NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Science Foundation and the British Antarctic Survey unveiled a newly completed map of Antarctica today that is expected to revolutionize research of the continent's frozen landscape.

The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica is a result of NASA's state-of-the-art satellite technologies and an example of the prominent role NASA continues to play as a world leader in the development and flight of Earth-observing satellites.    » read more »

Nov. 14, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - NASA will use the cold, harsh, isolated landscape of Antarctica to test one of its concepts for astronaut housing on the moon. The agency is sending a prototype inflatable habitat to Antarctica to see how it stands up during a year of use.    » read more »

Nov. 8, 2007 -- WASHINGTON -- NASA, the National Science Foundation and ILC Dover invite the news media to view an Antarctic-bound inflatable habitat at 10 a.m. EST, Wednesday, Nov. 14, at ILC's facility at One Moonwalker Rd., Frederica, Del.    » read more »

10 November 2007 -- U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says that after seeing the effect of climate change on Antarctica, he believes the world is "on the verge of a catastrophe."

Mr. Ban flew to a Chilean Air Force base Friday for a briefing with scientists on the world's southernmost continent. He also took an aerial tour of the famous Collins Glaciers, and visited the Antarctic research bases of Uruguay and South Korea, his home country.    » read more »

New York City, 01 August 2007 (By Kane Farabaugh) -- During the Cold War, Greenland was a strategic location for the United States military to track and detect Soviet aircraft and ballistic missiles. The military established radar and tracking sites throughout Greenland's ice sheet. The only way in and out of the remote facilities was by specially equipped aircraft. Since 1975, that mission has belonged to an Air Force unit based in New York state -- the 109th Airlift Wing.    » read more »