by Marc-André Miserez, swissinfo.ch

Antennas developed by Swiss scientists have sounded ice layers in Antarctica up to several kilometres thick, as well as the rocks underneath.

This is of interest not only to geologists and climatologists attempting to measure the effects of global warming on Earth’s ice-covered regions, but also to astronomers with an eye on lunar or Martian ice caps.

Attached to a plane, high-precision antennas designed at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) can analyse with unprecedented precision the composition of an ice layer nearly three kilometres thick, as well as the depth of the underlying bedrock.

Creating these high-tech antennas is part of a wide-ranging project known as the Polaris (Polarimetric Airborne Radar Ice Sounder) program, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) and run by the Technical University of Denmark.

Juan Mosig, head of EPFL’s electromagnetics and acoustics laboratory, which manufactured the antennas, told swissinfo.ch they had initially considered testing the equipment on the Aletsch glacier, the largest glacier in the Alps, in canton Valais.