Startling new images from NASA paint an alarming picture of the future of Greenland, and of our planet as a whole. The series of images released by the agency show a massive crack developing in the Petermann Glacier, which could be extremely bad news for the future of the glacier.

NASA’s Operation IceBridge recently flew over the giant crack and took some very detailed images, which were posted to Facebook on Friday. The chasm can be found at the center of the floating ice shelf, which is a tongue that extends into the water from the part of the glacier that sits on land.

The ice shelf could break off if the two cracks meet. The 1,295 square kilometer floating ice tongue is the largest in the Northern hemisphere. The Petermann Glacier lost 87 square kilometers between 2000 and 2001 to “calving”

“This paper illuminates the fate of the aquifer’s water,” said Kristin Poinar, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Before, we didn’t know if the water froze inside the ice sheet or reemerged onto the ice surface. In either of those scenarios, the meltwater would not contribute to sea level rise.”events, and 29 square kilometers in July 2008.