Development of a Functional Balloon-borne GNSS-RO System Prototype

The SBIR Phase II proposal outlines the approach of Night Crew Labs (NCL) in designing, and developing, and testing a system prototype to perform Global Navigation Satellite System radio occultations (GNSS-ROs) from a high-altitude balloon platform. NCL will continue building from the positive results achieved in Phase I that successfully demonstrated the feasibility of performing balloon-borne GNSS-RO. Significant effort will be placed in: a) developing a long-duration high-altitude balloon system to accommodate GNSS-RO scientific missions, and b) readying a GNSS-RO prototype for a long duration balloon flight to collect relevant data. After collecting GNSS-RO sounding measurements on these test flights, data products such as bending angle, refractivity, and atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles will be retrieved using RO retrieval software specifically developed for balloon applications. These balloon-borne RO data products will be assessed for accuracy and validity by comparing them to well-established data sources.