Unalaska, AK – Next Tuesday, NASA will launch its first dedicated oceanographic mission from Dutch Harbor.

The purpose of the ICESCAPE research voyage is to study climate change in the Arctic, with special focus on how varying ice conditions affect the ecosystems in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.

Over 40 scientists will be brought aboard the Healy, a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker that is capable of cutting through four and a half feet of ice continuously. The NASA mission will cost about $10 million, and it will last for five weeks.

The project's goals of varied. "We'll be looking at how the earth is varying and why the earth is varying. What types of forces are actually acting on the Earth - are they natural? Are they man-driven?," says NASA program manager Paula Bontempi of the questions icescape hopes to address. "And how do we go about predicting what's going to happen in the future based on what's happening now and what's happened in the past?."

The data that the scientists gather while aboard the Healy will help supplement the data that NASA's satellites have collected on arctic ice conditions. ICESCAPE chief scientist Kevin Arrigo says these conditions have changed dramatically in recent decades.

"Just basically in the last 10 years, the ice-free season in the Arctic Ocean has increased by about 45 days," says Arrigo.

Arrigo also says that the change has affected the food production schedule in the arctic substantially and that phytoplankton is now blooming a month earlier. This makes it difficult for migrating species to raise their young when food production is most abundant.

The ICESCAPE expedition is scheduled to conclude July 21, when the Healy reaches Seward, Alaska. A follow-up voyage is scheduled for the fall of 2011.