Geophysical and Planetary Acoustics Via Balloon Borne Platforms

• Main Authors: Bowman, Daniel C., Young, Eliot F., Krishnamoorthy, Siddharth, Lees, Jonathan M., Albert, Sarah A., Komjathy, Attila, Cutts, James
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: 58 GEOSCIENCES; 47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION; 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; Arctic; Canada; New Zealand; Sumner
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1459772; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1459772; https://doi.org/10.2172/1459772

Balloon-borne infrasound research began again in 2014 with a small payload launched as part of the High Altitude Student Platform (HASP; Bowman and Lees(2015)). A larger payload was deployed through the same program in 2015. These proof of concept experiments demonstrated that balloon-borne microbarometers can capture the ocean microbarom (a pervasive infrasound signal generated by ocean waves) even when nearby ground sensors are not able to resolve them (Bowman and Lees, 2017). The following year saw infrasound sensors as secondary payloads on the 2016 Ultra Long Duration Balloon flight from Wanaka, New Zealand (Bowman and Lees, 2018; Lamb et al., 2018) and the WASP 2016 balloon flight from Ft. Sumner, New Mexico (Young et al., 2018). Another payload was included on the HASP 2016 flight as well. In 2017, the Heliotrope project included a four element microbarometer network drifting at altitudes of 20-24 km on solar hot air balloons (Bowman and Albert, 2018). At the time of this writing the Trans-Atlantic Infrasound Payload (TAIP, operated by Sandia National Laboratories) and the Payload for Infrasound Measurement in the Arctic (PIMA, operated by Jet Propulsion Laboratory) are preparing to fly from Sweden to Canada aboard the PMC-Turbo balloon. The purpose of this experiment is to cross-calibrate several different infrasound sensing systems and test whether wind noise events occur in the stratosphere.