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North Slope of Alaska ARM Facilities Monthly Status Report- January 2019

Helsel, Fredrick; Dexheimer, Darielle D.; Ivey, Mark D.; Hardesty, Jasper O.

During the month of January 2019, the TBS crew made progress revamping the equipment to prepare for upcoming 2019 flights. Both winches were upgraded using a SE encore E43 59.3:1 gearbox coupled with a Leeson Permanent magnet motor. This increased the torque capability by approximately 3x and the rotational speed by ~30%. The existing electronics system on one winch was repurposed to power four 3,500 lb ATV winches. These winches will automate the retrieval of the balloons allowing for retrieval during faster winds, and thus increasing potential operating conditions, while also improving crew safety. The ATV winches are expected to be added to the second winch in February. Finally, a new electronics box was designed which will be used to power the new winch motor. The new winch motors are variable speed, meaning they accept 0-180V and the speed correlates to the input voltage. The new electronics boxes will be mounted directly to the winches to allow the winches to be removed from the trailers in case of size/weight operating limitations. The winches will instead be powered directly by 220V generators vs the lead acid battery banks used by the previous systems.

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TYPE Other Report YEAR 2019
DOIOSTI

Solar Hot Air Balloons for Terrestrial and Planetary Atmospheres

Bowman, Daniel B.; Albert, Sarah A.; Dexheimer, Darielle D.

The first solar hot air balloon was constructed in the early 1970s (Besset, 2016). Over the following decades the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) developed the Montgolfiere Infrarouge (MIR) balloon, which flew on solar power during the day and infrared radiation from the Earth's surface at night (Fommerau and Rougeron, 2011). The balloons were capable of flying for over 60 days and apparently reached altitudes of 30 km at least once (Malaterre, 1993). Solar balloons were the subject of a Jet Propulsion Laboratory study that performed test flights on Earth (Jones and Wu 1999) and discussed their mission potential for Mars, Jupiter, and Venus (Jones and Heun, 1997). The solar balloons were deployed from the ground and dropped from hot air balloons; some were altitude controlled by means of a remotely-commanded air valve at the top of the envelope. More recently, solar balloons have been employed for infrasound studies in the lower stratosphere (see Table 1). The program began in 2015, when a prototype balloon reached an altitude of 22 kilometers before terminating just prior to float (Bowman et al., 2015). An infrasound sensor was successfully deployed on a solar balloon during the 2016 SISE/USIE experiment, in which an acoustic signal from a ground explosion was captured at a range of 330 km (Anderson et al. 2018; Young et al. 2018). This led to the launch of a 5-balloon infrasound network during the Heliotrope experiment (Bowman and Albert, 2018). The balloons were constructed by the researchers themselves at a materials of less than $50 per envelope.

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TYPE Other Report YEAR 2018
DOIOSTI
Results 26–50 of 104
Results 26–50 of 104