so, britney, give me a tour of icefin? front we have sensors that are going to make measurements of the oceanography, telling us what the temperature is, and the salinity of the water and how much oxygen is there. in addition to that we have a forward—looking sonar here that allows us to map the three—dimensional cavities, so it allows us to see the shape of the ice and its texture. no—one‘s really been under thwaites, and what icefin's going to do is get up and close to the physics, get really close to the ice, really close to the sea floor and allows to see what is happening in a real way. how much of a challenge do you think this is going to be? well, it's always an impressive challenge to do anything here in antarctica and much more so when you are — you know — 1,200 miles from mcmurdo. when you think about drilling through 600 metres of ice, drilled by the best people in the world just to make an observation, it's quite a challenge. and then to operate a moving platform through is pretty special, actually. icefin may

britney, give me a tour of icefin?—— that will make a map of the oceanography, salinity and oxygen content of the water. we have sown i hear that allows us to map the 3—dimensional cavities, it allows us to see the shape of the ice and its texture. no—one has really been under thwaites, and what icefin will do is get up and close to the physics, really close to the eyes, really close to the sea floor and allows to see what is happening ina real and allows to see what is happening in a real way. and allows to see what is happening in a realway. how much of and allows to see what is happening in a real way. how much of the challenges you think this is going to be? is always an impressive challenge to do anything here in antarctica and much more so when you are 1200 miles from mcmurdo. when you think about drilling through 600 metres of i still buy the best people in the world just to make an observation, it's quite a challenge. and to operate a moving pipe from through there is quite special —— moving platform. icefin mi

they lowered in a remotely operated vehicle called icefin, which provided some unprecedented images of ice- covered shore of a glacier. funded by nasa, the device was built by a team from georgia tech, led by astrobiologistbr itney schmidt. >> one of the things that we don't know very well is exactly how glaciers move and how thee very b the glacier operates. so when we get to see it rightwh up close, righe it hits the ocean, we are seeing the freshest material. >> reporter: they collected sediment cores and dropped in instruments that measure water salinity, temperature andtu ulence. it turns out the water at thisic paar spot is very still. aurora basinski is a grad student at n.y>>. ince turbulence is below detectable levels, that meansn' there as much mixing as potentially we would have expected. and so what that means is, the warm water is mostly staying near the bottom, not necessarily making its way up to the ice. >> reporter: that might seem like good news, but for the first time, scientists have confirmed what they suspected: the ocean under thwaites is warm, 3.6 degrees fahren