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UAF graduate student researcher Kylee Branning was one of two people inside a windowless 40-foot shipping container converted into a high-tech science observatory near the southern edge of frozen Lake Torneträsk, Sweden’s sixth-largest.

Snow, cold, reindeer and long hours

June 2, 2025
Wind blew viciously across this isolated spot of northern Sweden on Feb. 1, 2024, driving the snow near horizontal. Gusts of 30 to 40 mph whipped...
A new and unique system of mini-observatories, which began operating in late 2024, allows scientists to map vastly larger areas of the far upper atmosphere while also providing greater detail.

Wind at the edge of space

June 1, 2025
A new and unique system of mini-observatories, which began operating in late 2024, allows scientists to map vastly larger areas of the far upper...

A glacier goes on the run in Greenland

May 28, 2025
Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland is one of Earth’s fastest-moving glaciers and one of the Greenland Ice Sheet’s largest glaciers. It produces...
The train of 10 snowmachines snaked slowly across the snow-covered Arctic Ocean ice toward the small tent far ahead, a single drop of yellow paint on a textured white canvas whose edges couldn’t be seen.

This place, just a few miles from the northernmost U.S. city of Utqiagvik, is a good place for the collection of University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists and technicians collecting data for the Lightweight Airborne Snow and Sea Ice Thickness Observing System, or LASSITOS, project.

Frozen ocean, solid science

May 8, 2025
The train of 10 snowmachines snaked slowly across the snow-covered Arctic Ocean ice toward the small tent far ahead, a single drop of yellow...

Into the hot zone by drone

April 11, 2025
Using unmanned aircraft to efficiently and safely measure soil gas emissions in potentially risky areas of an active volcano has great potential...

An AWESOME success

April 2, 2025
Two NASA sounding rockets that launched March 25 from Poker Flat Research Range north of Fairbanks ejected payloads that created a colorful...

Unraveling the aurora's birth

December 20, 2024
More than a week of waiting for the right conditions in a short nightly launch window had come to this: a few remaining minutes on the final...
New research shows that three sites spread along an approximately 620-mile portion of today’s Denali Fault in Alaska were once a smaller united geologic feature indicative of the final joining of two land masses. That feature was then torn apart by millions of years of tectonic activity.

Big stretch on the Denali Fault

December 19, 2024
New research shows that three sites spread along an approximately 620-mile portion of today’s Denali Fault in Alaska were once a smaller united...

Unrest at Mount Edgecumbe

August 1, 2023
Mount Edgecumbe volcano in Southeast Alaska reigns over Kruzof Island’s landscape and Sitka, the long-ago capital of Russian Alaska headquartered...