Shocking Boston-Sized Iceberg Caught On Camera For First Time

In late October, a giant chunk of ice broke free from the Pine Island Glacier and formed an iceberg that has been named B-46 by the US National Ice Center. Earlier this week, NASA's Operation IceBridge took a flight over the iceberg, giving humans their first look at the floating ice.

NASA's IceBridge team has spent years tracking Earth's ice, including glaciers, making regular flights with the space agency's DC-8. One of these pre-determined flights took place earlier this week and it happened to pass over the newly fractured ice sheet. The team captured a stunning aerial photo of the calved iceberg and has shared it with the public.

According to the US National Ice Center, the iceberg measures 66 square nautical miles, which is about 87 square miles; with a frame of reference, that's just a tiny bit smaller than the city of Boston.

As the image shows, the main iceberg itself has already started to break up into small pieces. This follows a previous crack that was noticed in late 2016; it eventually resulted in the iceberg B-44 that broke free in September 2017.

Scientists didn't spot the B-46 rift until September 2018, and it was only a few weeks later that the iceberg calved. According to NASA, this is the latest of what has been several major calving events, previous ones having also happened in 2013 and 2015.

Calving events aren't inherently problematic, but NASA is monitoring the ice for signs that icebergs are forming at a faster rate. The space agency says that prior to the 2013 iceberg, this particular glacier only experience one major calving event approximately every six years.