Ellen Sirks ellen.l.sirks@durham.ac.uk
Academic Visitor
Download by parachute: retrieval of assets from high altitude balloons
Sirks, E.L.; Clark, P.; Massey, R.J.; Benton, S.J.; Brown, A.M.; Damaren, C.J.; Eifler, T.; Fraisse, A.A.; Frenk, C.; Funk, M.; Galloway, M.N.; Gill, A.; Hartley, J.W.; Holder, B.; Huff, E.M.; Jauzac, M.; Jones, W.C.; Lagattuta, D.; Leung, J.S.-Y.; Li, L.; Luu, T.V.T.; McCleary, J.; Nagy, J.M.; Netterfield, C.B.; Redmond, S.; Rhodes, J.D.; Romualdez, L.J.; Schmoll, J.; Shaaban, M.M.; Tam, S.-I.
Authors
P. Clark
Professor Richard Massey r.j.massey@durham.ac.uk
Professor
S.J. Benton
A.M. Brown
C.J. Damaren
T. Eifler
A.A. Fraisse
Professor Carlos Frenk c.s.frenk@durham.ac.uk
Professor
M. Funk
M.N. Galloway
A. Gill
J.W. Hartley
B. Holder
E.M. Huff
Professor Mathilde Jauzac mathilde.jauzac@durham.ac.uk
Professor
W.C. Jones
Dr David Lagattuta david.j.lagattuta@durham.ac.uk
Post Doctoral Research Associate
J.S.-Y. Leung
L. Li
T.V.T. Luu
J. McCleary
J.M. Nagy
C.B. Netterfield
S. Redmond
J.D. Rhodes
L.J. Romualdez
J. Schmoll
M.M. Shaaban
S.-I. Tam
Abstract
We present a publicly-available toolkit of flight-proven hardware and software to retrieve 5 TB of data or small physical samples from a stratospheric balloon platform. Before launch, a capsule is attached to the balloon, and rises with it. Upon remote command, the capsule is released and descends via parachute, continuously transmitting its location. Software to predict the trajectory can be used to select a safe but accessible landing site. We dropped two such capsules from the SUPERBIT telescope, in September 2019. The capsules took ~37 minutes to descend from ~30 km altitude. They drifted 32 km and 19 km horizontally, but landed within 300 m and 600 m of their predicted landing sites. We found them easily, and successfully recovered the data. We welcome interest from other balloon teams for whom the technology would be useful.
Citation
Sirks, E., Clark, P., Massey, R., Benton, S., Brown, A., Damaren, C., …Tam, S. (2020). Download by parachute: retrieval of assets from high altitude balloons. Journal of Instrumentation, 15(05), Article P05014. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/15/05/p05014
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Apr 3, 2020 |
Online Publication Date | May 22, 2020 |
Publication Date | 2020-05 |
Deposit Date | Jun 10, 2020 |
Publicly Available Date | Jun 10, 2020 |
Journal | Journal of Instrumentation |
Publisher | IOP Publishing |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 15 |
Issue | 05 |
Article Number | P05014 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/15/05/p05014 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1300319 |
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Copyright Statement
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of Sissa Medialab. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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