Cross-Greenland Ski Trip Tracked with Google Maps

notmartinfrobisher writes "Around Guardian Mobility offices we have been excited to support an exploratory ski trip across Greenland. Anne Marte Pensgaard is skiing across Greenland with only a friend and some husky dogs for company. She has been outfitted with one of our Tracer units which has a GPS receiver and send data to our backoffice through Globalstars Low-earth orbit satellite network. We're tracking her progress using Google Maps and using MyGMaps. to map multiple points onto Google Map's satellite imagery. When asked about her trip Anne Marte wrote: "Our expedition consist of two phases. This year we (Marit and myself and 12 greenland huskies) are going to find a passage into the inland ice (the icecap itself) where we will be able to bring all the dogs and our sledges up on the ice. We will start in Ilulissat on the west coast and then travel north.(around 70degrees N) How far north we will go this year depends on the conditions. Our main expedition will be a more than 1000 km trip from Ilulissat to Qaanaq (Thule Air Base) in the north, either in 2006 or in 2007." We provided her with a Tracer unit set up to wake up every 30 minutes but to transmit only when she has moved at least 200m, this way she won't have to worry about turning off the unit when she's camping at night. We'll be updating you on this exciting trip by posting maps of her current location every couple of days. Maps and satellite imagery are courtesy Google Maps."

Comments

Globalstar's coverage near the poles?

[_merlin]

I thought I read somewhere that because of the pitch of the GlobalStar satellites' orbits (they aren't quite polar), you get poor coverage near the poles. Or is this ski trip far enough from the pole to get good coverage.

Re:Blatant Advertising

[XorNand]

What's more, looks like the submitter created a /. account just to submit this story. ::rolls eyes::

The Slashdot helped cement the term "astroturfing" in the public vernacular back in the late 90's--the irony is so sharp it almost hurts. Just another example of how media placement has become the new norm on the 'net, since that whole advertising experiment didn't quite work out as expected.

Re:Tracking

[Hork_Monkey]

So kids get smarter about messing around...

It's been happening for generations.

This time though, the tinfoil hat might come in useful.

What reason for the trip again?

[switcha]

we have been excited to support an exploratory ski trip across Greenland ... onto Google Map's satellite imagery.

Maybe I'm a numbskull, but with Google Maps, I've done a full exploratory trip around my neighborhood; sidewalks, backyards, the whole shebang. Why not just call this out as a "publicity stunt" instead of calling it "exploring" the same snow and ice you can look at on a computer in front of a cozy fire with a hot chocolate?

This is ALSO very impressive...

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

This is my friend's site (also in the .sig). He begins an around the world bike trip in July for a documentary and he has built one hell of a mapping routine for his site.

He's using NASA's data and Perl.

Distortion at high latitudes

[kbmccarty]

Greenland is horribly distorted on the satellite images (it doesn't exist in the normal map view) due to the map projection used. Which brings up a pet peeve of mine -- why don't any of the online map companies convert to the most appropriate map projection for any given region? This shouldn't be too hard. It's very annoying to see the huge horizontal stretching distortions in maps of Alaska and Canada.