ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION
NASA scientists say they have discovered the birth of an iceberg -- an 18 mile (29 km) long and 50 meters deep crack in the Pine Island Glacier in western Antarctica.
The rift went unnoticed until an October 14 mission by NASA's DC-8 aircraft found evidence of an emerging crack in Pine Island's floating ice shelf. In a follow-up mission on October 26, NASA scientists made the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving in progress.
Images released from that flight show a close-up view of the crack, spreading across the ice shelf, spanning a length of approximately 18 miles (29 km) and about 820 feet apart (250 meters) at its widest. The deepest points from the ice shelf surface ranged 165 to 195 feet (50 to 60 meters). When the iceberg breaks off the shelf, it will cover about 340 square miles (880 square kilometers) of surface area.
NASA has not indicated when the iceberg is expected to break free from the glacier.
