What are these guys doing out on the Greenland Ice Sheet dressed in white suits? Are they pretending to be polar bears... or are they snow commandoes - camouflaged for a mission against ice invaders?

Actually, these scientists from France are just wearing lint free suits in order to avoid contamination in their search for micro-meteorites that may have fallen on the inland ice sheet.

The vast ice plain, far removed from any sources of "litter", provides a huge catcher's net for anything that might fall from the sky. No more meteorites fall in the Arctic than elsewhere on Earth - they're just easier to find when the only thing around them is snow.

Large snow samples are collected, then melted down and filtered.

It is important that nothing get into the snow samples other than what likely fell from the sky, so they not only collect snow far from centers of civilization, but far from their own "polluting" camp as well. Even their hair is covered (imagine analysing something only to find out that it was part of Pierre!).