Low, cost dual-use platforms for environmental sensing

Unmanned aircraft and lightweight instruments are a dual-use technology that offer dramatic new opportunities to both the atmospheric research community and to operational missions of the US Navy. Aurora Flight Sciences is the first company in the world to develop an unmanned aircraft, Perseus, specifically for enviromental sensing missions. The purpose of this proposal is to use Perseus as a demonstration platform for lightweight enviromental sensing payloads of interest to the Office of Naval Research. Two candidate payloads are discussed in this proposal (one for tropospheric research and one for operational weather reconnaissance). During Phase I, a description of the sensor/platform system, what would be measured, and why a remotely controlled platform is scientifically/fiscally superior to the present methods of making such measurements would be documented. Phase I will produce a report that identified concepts to be tested in phase II, Aurora will build the system identified in Phase I and demonstrate its predicted capabilities.