todd jacobs is the head of noaa's unmanned aircraft program. >> out here what it does is it provides us the ability to provide a persistent camera source so we can have very high, stable resolution camera looking at oil in the water if we were dealing with an oil spill it could help also vector small boats and personnel around. >> in a 2014 mission aboard the healy, fluorescein dye was used to simulate oil so researchers could study how it moves in ice. these images were taken by a camera mounted on an aerostat during that mission. the idea is images could be relayed to an incident command thousands of miles away on land. >> the holy grail is to be able to actually send photographs and full motion video with their associated telemetry so both the latitude and longitude feeding incident command centers. >> what about an oil spill in the arctic? >> i do believe if and when that event occurs, it's going to be a difficult event to deal with. the concern is it's a fairly short operation window... if something long playing out like say deepwater horizon occurred up here, it would be a cata

todd in des moines, iowa. joining me here for insight and news, jennifer jacobs of the des moines register, joy-ann read of msnbc and david brody of christian broadcasting network. >>> cruz, rubio, paul, sanders, the candidates are all here. we're going to do our own caucus. welcome to sunday and a special edition of "meet the press." >>> from des oines, iowa, this is a special edition of "meet the press" with chuck todd. >>> good sunday morning. they're here. the iowa ku kuscaucuces. it all happens tomorrow night. we're here in des moines at the west end architectural salvage, a coffee shop that also sells custom and vintage furniture. and of course the candidates are here, all ere, all over io selling themselves. in fact, on this last full day before the caucuses, the 13 candidates campaigning in iowa are holding 1338 events making last-minute pitching hoping iowa will become the first step on the road to nomination. we couldn't be more excited or stay tuned for our christmas eve of politics. we start with the latest bloomberg poll. put it up on the screen on thehe republican side, trump with a five-point lead

jacobs of the "des moines register" and robert costa of the "washington post." welcome to sunday. it's "meet the press." >> announcer: from nbc news in washington, this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. >>> good sunday morning. apologies for all of you that didn't win powerball, but we've got a huge show for you today, including my sit-down with donald trump and the struggling effort by some in the so-called republican answerment to figure out some way to stop either trump or ted cruz from becoming the party's nominee. we can say this -- they've got their work cut out for them. according to our brand new nbc news/"wall street journal"/marist poll out in iowa and nrp new hampshire this morning. let's start in iowa where cruz holds a slim lead over trump, 28% to 24%. marco rubio and ben carson fighting far distant third. as we'll show you later, if trump manages to bring in new voters, he does much better. we did two different electorates in iowa to test this phenomenon. here are the single-digit republicans in iowa, the ones who got at least 3% in our poll. there's jeb bush stuck at 4%. and by the way, the two previous guys who won iowa didn't even get 3% in this, huckabee and santor