Aerosonde
NOAA – NASA Hurricane Aerosonde Demonstration Project
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) demonstration project is scheduled to run for approximately ten weeks, from August 27 to October 31, 2007, in cooperation with Aerosonde Corp., NASA, and the U.S. Navy. The Aerosondes will be deployed at Key West Naval Air Station (NASKW), and will have an approximate 1200 nautical mile (round-trip) operational range. A second deployment location will be NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in southeast Virginia.
Objective
The primary objective of this project is to demonstrate the Aerosonde platform's overall capabilities (including survivability) in a hurricane environment.
The key scientific objectives are:
- Test remote communication capability from NASA's King Air manned aircraft.
- Undertake research aimed at improve understanding of the high-wind boundary layer and the exchanges of heat, moisture, and momentum across the oceanic surface.
- Fully explore Aerosonde's potential to effectively observe critical regions of the tropical cyclone boundary layer environment.
- Conduct low level missions into the eyewall region of hurricanes at altitudes of 300m or lower.
- Conduct several low level flights into several tropical cyclones including multiple aircraft missions.
- Continue to transmit real-time surface wind, pressure, and thermodynamic data to NOAA/TPC in direct support of operational requirements.
- Provide calibration and verification data sets for NASA.
- As a direct result of improved understanding of the hurricane boundary layer and air-sea environment, look for potential opportunities to contribute towards future operational model development
In addition, Aerosonde experiments will be coordinated with NOAA and Air Force Reserves (AFRES) manned aircraft missions during the 2007 demo. The following experiments are possible:
- Inflow Experiment - Sample the tropical cyclone inflow layer's thermodynamic structure by flying within 600 feet of the surface in the inner core, spiraling in on the winds of the storm. The continuous observations of very low level winds may result in establishing the location and magnitude of storm's maximum wind speed.
- Tropical Cyclone Thermodynamic Asymmetry Experiment - The Aerosonde would fly a fixed radius orbit (~200 km from the center) either prior to or after its spiral in toward the center in order to improve the radial accuracy of the 34kt, 50kt, and 64kt wind estimates.
- Eye Sounding and Loitering Experiment - The Aerosonde would make a corkscrew sounding within the eye up to 10,000 feet, to find any early detection signal of rapid intensity changes. This would require a clear, discernible eye when there are no AFRES flights in progress and with close coordination with any NOAA flights at the time of the sounding.
