Southern Greenland | NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis: STS-45 Science Mission

Southern Greenland | NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis: STS-45 Science Mission

Greenland (called Tartupaluk in Inuktitut and Greenlandic) is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark and is the largest of the kingdom's three constituent parts by land area, the others being Denmark proper and the Faroe Islands. It shares a small 1.2 km border with Canada on Hans Island. Citizens of Greenland are full citizens of Denmark and of the European Union. Greenland is one of the Overseas Countries and Territories of the European Union and is part of the Council of Europe. It is the world's largest island and lies between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

Image Description: The southern tip of Greenland is seen in this high-oblique, almost colorless, stark photograph of the world's largest island. The blackness of space contrasts sharply with the whiteness of clouds, ice, and snow. The only true color is the blue of the Atlantic Ocean and the Labrador Sea. Cloud-free conditions existing along the southern coastal area emphasize the deeply indented fjords along the coast. A close look at the white areas reveals three different features—snow and ice on the land; cloud formations over the central region and the eastern and western sides of the island; and wispy-looking ice floes off the southeast and the southwest tip of the fjord-lined coast that are moved by the East Greenland Current to the south-southwest, and larger ice packs developing north along the east coast. Greenland has the only surviving continental glacier in the Northern Hemisphere. This ice sheet covers seven-eighths of Greenland's surface and contains an estimated 11 percent of the world's fresh water. In addition, the ice in the center of Greenland is 10,000 feet thick. Godthab, the main town on Greenland, lies at 64 N.

This spectacular north looking view of south Greenland (62.0N, 46.0W) shows numerous indentations along the coastline. Many contain small settlements. These indentations are fiords carved by glaciers of the last ice age. Even today, ice in the center of Greenland is as much as 10,000 ft. thick and great rivers of ice continuously flow toward the sea, where they melt or break off as icebergs—examples can be seen floating offshore.

STS-45 was a 1992 NASA Space Shuttle mission using the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Its almost nine-day scientific mission was with a non-deployable payload of instruments. It was the 46th Space Shuttle mission and the 11th for Atlantis. 

The mission carried the first Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS-1) on Spacelab pallets mounted in the orbiter's cargo bay. The non-deployable payload, equipped with 12 instruments from the U.S., France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Japan, conducted studies in atmospheric chemistry, solar radiation, space plasma physics and ultraviolet astronomy.

Crew size: 7 Members

Crew

Commander: Charles Bolden
Pilot: Brian Duffy
Mission Specialist 1: Kathryn D. Sullivan
Mission Specialist 2: David Leestma
Mission Specialist 3: Michael Foale (U.S/UK)
Payload Specialist 1: Dirk Frimout (ESA - Belgium)
Payload Specialist 2: Byron K. Lichtenberg

Mission duration: 8 days, 22 hours, 9 minutes, 27 seconds

Orbits completed: 143

Distance travelled: 5,211,340 km (3,238,180 mi)

Launch date: March 24, 1992

Landing date: April 2, 1992

Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center

Image Date: March 1992

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