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Published December 2019 | Published
Journal Article Open

Aerial Seismology Using Balloon-Based Barometers

Abstract

Seismology on Venus has long eluded planetary scientists due to extreme temperature and pressure conditions on its surface, which most electronics cannot withstand for mission durations required for ground-based seismic studies. We show that infrasonic (low-frequency) pressure fluctuations, generated as a result of ground motion, produced by an artificial seismic source known as a seismic hammer, and recorded using sensitive microbarometers deployed on a tethered balloon, are able to replicate the frequency content of ground motion. We also show that weak, artificial seismic activity thus produced may be geolocated by using multiple airborne barometers. The success of this technique paves the way for balloon-based aero-seismology, leading to a potentially revolutionary method to perform seismic studies from a remote airborne station on the earth and solar system objects with substantial atmospheres such as Venus and Titan.

Additional Information

© 2019 IEEE. Manuscript received February 6, 2019; revised July 8, 2019; accepted July 24, 2019. Date of publication August 21, 2019; date of current version November 25, 2019. This work was supported by the Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, under Contract DE-NA0003525. The works of S. Krishnamoorthy, A. Komjathy, M. T. Pauken, and J. A. Cutts were supported by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The works of V. H. Lai and J. M. Jackson were supported by the W. M. Keck Institute for Space Studies. The works of R. F. Garcia, D. Mimoun, E. Kassarian, L. Martire, A. Sournac, and A. Cadu were supported in part by ISAE-SUPAERO, in part by the Fondation ISAE-SUPAERO, in part by the la Délégation Générale de l´Armement (DGA), in part by the le Région Occitanie, and in part by the le Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES). The authors would like to thank the reviewers of this paper for their insightful comments. They would also like to thank G. Walsh, G. Savastano, S. Kedar, K. Barrow, S. Bandyopadhyay, and others from Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, and HH Seismic for their support leading up to and during the Pahrump experiment. They would also like to thank the Front Sight Firearms Training Institute for providing us with the test site for this experiment. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Energy or the United States Government. Barometer data used to generate results presented are available on a publicly accessible FigShare repository with doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.6137507. Seismometer data used are available at a FigShare repository with doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.9118490.

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August 19, 2023
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October 20, 2023