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The Tufts high altitude sonic anemometer [1,2] is flying on a long duration high altitude balloon mission out of Wanaka, New Zealand, courtesy of NASA and the Columbia Scientific Ballooning Facility. As far as we are aware, this is the first ever long duration flight of a stratospheric sonic anemometer. The instrument will monitor vector (3D) relative winds at the gondola with an update rate of approximately 3 x 3D measurements per second. The system also includes pressure and temperature sensors, a 9DOF IMU for geospatial orientation, and a GPS receiver. All the data is logged internally and will be available with the high update rate (3 Hz) recording for the entire mission when the gondola is recovered. There is, however, some risk that the data could be lost if recovery is not possible. In addition, data will not be available for months while awaiting return of the instrument. To address this, an Iridium modem was added to the system for this flight. Iridium messages are sent over the satellite network once every 20 minutes. Each message contains mean wind, the standard deviation of wind, and the peak wind in the last 20 minute interval (all as 3D vectors), in addition to pressure, temperature, altitude, GPS location, and orientation information. These messages are used to generate the plots on this site.
The goals of this site are to monitor flight data without needing to wait for SD card retrieval and to create a platform to share the recorded high altitude wind anemometry data with the global scientific community. This Pyscript Webhook site receives hex encoded messages sent from a mission balloon mounted Artemis Global Tracker over the Iridium Network through RockBlock. The backend Python file then parses that message and updates the map, graphs and model to display the data live on the front end HTML file. This web service is hosted on Render and message data is saved onto a persistent disk. The full system (sensor head, electronics, signal processing, communications, and web services) were built by students in Prof. Robert White’s group at Tufts University (https://sites.tufts.edu/senselab/). Students involved include Elias Bilal (web system programming, mechanical fabrication), Rishabh Chaudhary (transducers, acoustics, and signal processing), Tim Cheng (system electronics and signal processing), Julia Huckaby (mechanical design), Zarina Kosherbayeva (mechanical design and fabrication), Cade Smith (infrasound measurements), Ben Fisher (mechanical design and pressure sensors), Shekinah Kanamugire (temperature sensors), and Freidlay Steve (mechanical design and fabrication).
[1] Cheng, Tim J., et al. "Test Flight of a Stratospheric Sonic Anemometer Prototype." Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 41.12 (2024): 1139-1149. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atot/41/12/JTECH-D-24-0010.1.xml
[2] White, Robert D., et al. "Flow Testing of a Digital Sonic Anemometer for Martian and Stratospheric Environments." AIAA AVIATION FORUM AND ASCEND 2024. https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2024-3933
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