Rapid prototyping helps create aircraft to study atmosphere

The unmanned platform is part of the ASTRA (Atmospheric Science Through Robotic Aircraft) project that aims to demonstrate how a low-cost, custom-built high-altitude platform could be developed and manufactured over a period of a few days.

Dr András Sóbester, project leader from Southampton University, told The Engineer: ‘If there is a phenomenon that happens suddenly and you want to deploy some kind of instrument to measure it then our device is ideal.’ Examples of such phenomena include volcano eruptions and nuclear fall-out.

The balloon-borne platform, dubbed ASTRA Atom, has been built to carry a payload containing atmospheric monitoring equipment into the upper atmosphere. The latex weather balloon, which will stretch from 1.5m in diameter to 5m as it ascends, will carry the Atom to heights of 30km.

The current solution to monitoring atmospheric parameters includes attaching radiosondes to weather balloons, which can contain an array of sensing equipment.

‘The radiosonde has the advantage of being simple to use and deploy but it has a number of drawbacks,’ said Sóbester. ’You can only gather as much data as your bandwidth allows you to transmit back to the ground.’