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The Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX) project is exploring Antarctica to find a continuous ice record from the present to 1.5 million years ago and document the mid-Pleistocene transition, which occurred ~1 million years ago. The current longest ice record is 800,000 years old. This work describes a new 600-900 MHz UHF radar to help address this challenge with a 1) much larger, 22.8 m or 57-wavelength, cross-track antenna array and 2) higher transmit power, than prior renditions. Survey flights on a Basler aircraft were conducted from the South Pole in 2022-2023 and in 2023-2024. In this work, we provide an overview of the design requirements, the radar system architecture, and antenna array implementation. We also present preliminary results from aerial surveys conducted in Antarctica.
Kaundinya et al. (Sun,) studied this question.