When scientists with NASA’s Operation IceBridge mission fly over the Earth’s poles gathering ice sheet data, they can focus solely on their science and not the computing systems that make it possible, thanks to Indiana University IT experts.

For the past five years, IU’s Research Technologies group has provided the field data management, processing and archival storage for IceBridge, the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice. Twice a year, Operation IceBridge missions fly over Antarctica or Greenland to collect data about how glaciers strike the bedrock and how that physical interaction affects the ice sheet — and global climate change.

For each expedition, IU data experts don their parkas and fly to the ends of the Earth to take care of this important data in person.