* Astronomy

NASA will 'break the ice' on a pair of new airborne radars that can help monitor climate change when a team of scientists embarks this week on a two-month expedition to the vast, frigid terrain of Greenland and Iceland.
Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and Dryden Flight Research Centre, Edwards, California, will depart Dryden Friday, May 1, on a modified NASA Gulfstream III aircraft. In a pod beneath the aircraft's fuselage will be two JPL-developed radars that are flying test beds for evaluating tools and technologies for future space-based radars.
One of the radars, the L-band wavelength Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, calibrates and supplements satellite data; the other is a proof-of-concept Ka-band wavelength radar called the Glacier and Land Ice Surface Topography Interferometer, or GLISTIN.

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