JUBA1

Joint UAS-Balloon Activities 1 (JUBA I)

1 August 2017 - 31 August 2017

Lead Scientist: Darielle Dexheimer

Observatory: AMF (ARM Mobile Facility 3) - OLI

The JUBA (Joint-UAS Balloon Activities) Intensive Operating Period will be conducted within ARM’s R- 2204 Restricted Airspace at Oliktok Point, Alaska, from 8/6/17 – 8/10/17. Sandia National Laboratories will operate a small tethered balloon system in conjunction with unmanned aircraft such as a DJI Phantom quadcopter or Cinestar 8 octocopter. Optical fiber will be suspended from the UAS and tethered balloon and used with a distributed temperature sensing (DTS) system in order to collect measurements of atmospheric temperature with high spatial resolution. Temperature measurements will also be collected from radiosondes and additional sensors operating on the tethered balloon and UAS for comparison and calibration purposes. The feasibility and accuracy of atmospheric distributed temperature sensing measurements using UAS will be evaluated. If successful, DTS measurements from UAS could provide high accuracy, and high spatial and temporal resolution temperature measurements almost continuously during flight, collecting a temperature profile from the surface to the UAS’s altitude. UAS could provide a quick, small-footprint, and easily-portable platform for collecting temperature measurements within the atmospheric boundary layer, especially in remote field locations where transporting helium for balloons could be problematic. The UAS and distributed temperature sensing measurement system could have applications in atmospheric and climate measurements, propellant burn tests, and aerosol plume, wave propagation, and wind turbine wake modeling.