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Detecting and Locating Acoustic Events With a Balloon Borne Aeroseismometer

Session: Infrasound and the Seismo-Acoustic Wavefield III

Type: Oral

Date: 4/22/2021

Presentation Time: 09:45 AM Pacific

Description: 

Microbarometers on free flying balloons have enabled a whole new class of infrasound investigations. Because pressure is a scalar, however, typical microbarometers cannot determine the direction of arrival of an acoustic wave. On Earth's surface, this issue is solved by deploying sensor arrays with apertures of tens to thousands of meters. This is clearly not feasible in the air. Instead, we use accelerometers and inertial measurement units to capture the vibrations induced on the balloon by impinging acoustic waves. We show that we can form crude event locations without taking the flight system's impulse response into account. More sophisticated processing methods are in development and should greatly improve on this capability in the coming years. The "aeroseismometry" technique presented here has implications for effective sparse balloon networks on Earth as well as potential Venus seismology missions. SNL is managed and operated by NTESS under DOE NNSA contract DE-NA0003525.

Presenting Author: Daniel C. Bowman

Student Presenter: No

Authors