NASA Dispatches Rubber Ducks for Science

Sept. 23, 2008 -- When a sophisticated science probe failed to return any data about whether pools of melted glacial ice were showing up in the ocean, a NASA researcher turned to a decidedly low-tech solution: a brigade of rubber ducks.

Robotics expert Alberto Behar, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., wants to figure out if water shooting through tunnels in Greenland's Jakobshavn Glacier makes it into Baffin Bay.

The work is part of ongoing studies by NASA and other agencies to understand changes in the levels of Earth's seas, which may be tied to global warming.

Behar, a robotics expert, dispatched a probe with a positioning sensor and satellite telephone into one of the glacier's water tunnels in hopes of tracking where the water ends up. In the summer, ice melts on glacier's surfaces and pools into shallow lakes and streams that then fall into water tunnels in the ice known as moulins.

Where it ends up is a mystery.

"We're a little frustrated right now," said Seelye Martin, the program manager for NASA's Earth sciences division. "The water has to go somewhere but we don't know where."