A Navigation System that Enables an Aircraft to be flown under a Stratospheric Balloon
Abstract
We will describe a system that was designed to locate, track and navigate an aircraft under a stratospheric balloon in flight. This system was designed for the Extreme Space Observatory (EUSO) balloon flights in order to place calibration light sources within the field of view of the EUSO instrument during its flight in order to perform an in-flight calibration.The system consists of a radio beacon located on the balloon that transmits its GPS coordinates at a 5 second cadence. The radio signals from this beacon are received by a software-defined radio onboard the aircraft which is interfaced to a laptop computer. This computer runs a real-time program that displays the balloon coordinates and the coordinates of the aircraft from a second GPS receiver in the aircraft. Additionally, the program also actively propagates the position of both the aircraft and balloon forward in time, based on the most recent coordinates. On the screen of the computer there is a coordinate display showing the position of the balloon relative to the location and heading of the aircraft and a second display giving the location of the aircraft in a projected geographic coordinate system centered on the balloon and oriented with the x axis being latitude and the y axis being longitude. The program also calculates and overlays the field of view of the EUSO instrument on both displays. The design and use of this navigation system will be explained. Both test and balloon flight results will be shown.
- Publication:
-
42nd COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- July 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018cosp...42E2196M