The world's largest iceberg has started drifting away

TORONTO -- The biggest iceberg on the planet is making its way out into the Southern Ocean.

Satellite images show “A68” steadily floating away from Antarctica. The visuals, released by satellite imagery company Polar View, detail the iceberg’s journey between January 2019 and January 2020:

Here’s the same video with the iceberg highlighted:

The 6,000 km² chunk of ice broke off from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in 2017. It stayed relatively stationary for a couple of years, but really started to travel last summer.

Here’s imagery from the European Union Earth Observation Programme showing it breaking off:

LarsenC-A68, the largest iceberg ever observed (it is said to be the size of Manhattan or 50 times as large as Paris), calved in July 2017 from the Larsen ice shelf in #Antarctica, but has not yet gone very far!
Here is its journey since, as seen by #Sentinel1 ������️ pic.twitter.com/0is34mBMJV

— Copernicus EU (@CopernicusEU) June 17, 2019

A68 is about the size of Prince Edward Island, and is currently the world’s largest iceberg. It’s not quite as big as B15, however, which had an area of 11,000 km² when it broke off from the Ross Ice Shelf 2000. B15 has since broken up into smaller icebergs.

A68 so far has maintained most of its size since setting sail, but researchers expect it to diminish once it hits the open ocean.

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  Satellite images show “A68” steadily floating away from Antarctica. (Polarview/ESA Sentinel-1 via Storyful)