NOAA Phase II Awarded – “A Tube-Deployed Expendable UAV for Atmospheric Sensing”

The goal of this effort is to meld a dropsonde’s sensing and expendable deployment attributes with a UAV’s guided flight capability. Barron Associates is developing an atmospheric-sensor UAV that, like a dropsonde, can be tube-deployed from NOAA aircraft into remote regions.

Barron Associates’ proposed UAV provides the ability to gather atmospheric data across a wide geographic range, and over an extended period of time, while still retaining the dropsondes’ ability to be deployed to remote locations. As a powered flight vehicle, it greatly extends a dropsonde’s atmospheric mapping capabilities providing increased spatial coverage. This effort will build upon successful Phase I flight tests.