A Ruggedized UAS for Scientific Data Gathering in Harsh Environments

The atmospheric models that are employed by dispersion studies provide information that can affect human safety. Examples not only include volcanic ash aviation hazards, but pollution alerts, toxic releases, dust storms and wildfire smoke hazards that often depend on the accuracy of these models. Accurate data input and model validation are needed for these important safety systems. Even basic atmospheric conditions such as wind and temperature are estimated or modeled from nearest weather stations that could be far from the location of interest. Ground systems, manned aircraft, balloons and even dropsondes supply this data but have limitations. Satellites such as ASTER, MODIS, AIRS and OMI are invaluable but can still suffer from infrequent coverage, cloud masking and limits in resolution. Phase II and II-e work has demonstrated the value of using small UAS for volcanic monitoring. Similarly, previous efforts have demonstrated that targeted observations of tropical storms by UAS can provide extremely valuable data sets for improving forecasts and models, but are also difficult to obtain. A number of obstacles including regulations and the distance required to intercept evolving storms have limited the number of land based flights. The use of airborne deployed UAS have recently overcome some of those limitations, and have generated targeted data that compares quite well with measurements obtained using proven methods. For both cases, the use of UAS continues to be plagued by obstacles related to operations in difficult conditions. This effort proposes to tightly integrate wind, communications and terrain models with real time measurements to automate many of the processes that generally require a team of expert operators to perform safely. This includes both preflight mission planning as well as reactive navigation to not only maintain safety of the platform, but also improve critical metrics such as time on station.

Key potential customers within the NASA Earth Science program include the Tropospheric Chemistry Program (TCP), the Applied Sciences Air Quality Program, the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) mission, the Aura mission, the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS), the Orbital Carbon Observatory (OCO-2/3) programs, and the Earth Ventures program for airborne field campaigns. BST will also continue to work with programs at JPL and NASA Ames focused on volcanic and wildfire observations.

Key potential customers in other government agencies include USGS, NOAA, DOE, and the National Weather Service. The ability of this system to operate in hazardous environments can be utilized in wildfire monitoring and support, where particulates and severe turbulence are a regular occurrence. There is also a commercial market for the multi-hole probe sensor developed as part of this work.

This is a mature technology (TRL 9) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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