Tech & Biz

NASA Lost Its Rubber Ducks

by Jordan Yerman | December 26, 2008 at 10:50 am

688 views | 15 Recommendations | 6 comments

Attention, citizen rubber-duck wranglers: NASA lost its rubber duckies, and needs YOUR help! The US space agency was tracking glacier movements with the little fellas, which are cheap and robust.

Either the flotilla of ducks is adorning a polar-bear frat-house wall, or you may find one yourself, provided you're in the arctic.

The US space agency has yet to find any trace of 90 bathtub toys that were dropped through holes in Greenland's ice three months ago in an effort to track the way the Arctic icecap is melting. Scientists threw the ducks into tubular holes known as "moulins" in the Jakobshavn glacier on Greenland's west coast, hoping they would find their way into channels beneath the hard-packed surface, to track the flow of melt water into the ocean.

"We haven't heard anything from them yet," Nasa robotics expert Alberto Behar told the BBC.

Also missing is a football-sized floating robotic probe equipped with a GPS positioning transmitter and powered by hi-tech batteries. It has failed to communicate its position. "We did not hear a signal back, so it probably got stuck under the ice somewhere," said Behar.

For the first one that's recovered, NASA is offering up a measly $100 reward. But hey, that's $100 more than you had before, you crusty old arctic fisherman.

Note: These ducks are not to be confused with the legendary lost shipment of rubber duckies, who have still not been accounted for.

0 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | | facebook | stumbleupon

recommend This comment thread is now closed

Michael Totton

at 12:10 on December 26th, 2008

Never has the meagre rubber duck been so important. Lets just hope they don't all share the same fate and at least some of them reappear. Let us not lose sight of the major issue here...

Michael Totton has contributed a photo to this story.

jessievi

at 13:06 on December 26th, 2008

This photo was taken last year at a local fair,I am sure some of you will remember the game Lucky Duck! Where you pick up a duck floating in a tank and you match up the number on the bottom with a prize!

jessievi has contributed a photo to this story.

dunkelberg

at 13:34 on December 26th, 2008

I think the problem is the small reward. Granted, they can't put big rewards on all of them.

However, NASA has these space shuttles they're about to retire. Maybe if one of the lucky ducks had THAT as a prize, people would be on the lookout for them.

Uwe Paschen

at 21:53 on December 26th, 2008

They should have made them florescent with radio collars and solar packs. They did get the Idea from a cargo accident two decades back that lost a shipment of rubber ducks that ended up along the coast of NF in Canada. It made the news back then. Well those where fund maybe because they wanted to be fund.

Maybe some shark developed a taste for rubber duck and has now an upset stomach.