Terrestrial Mission Extender for Weather Balloon Radiosonde

Abstract

Thousands of balloon-assisted meteorological sensor packages, known as radiosondes, are launched every day from various monitoring stations across the continental United States. However, only a small fraction of these instrument payloads are ever recovered, with most ending up as hazardous electronics waste strewn across the country. By creating a terrestrial landing system that can be retrofitted to common commercially available radiosondes, the landing survivability of these instrument payloads may be able to be improved. Furthermore, such a landing platform could also support continued meteorological data acquisition and transmission, allowing the radiosonde to transition from high-altitude monitoring to surface level sensor monitoring. Not only would such a terrestrial mission extension module fitted to a radiosonde drastically increase the potential utility of an existing radiosonde, but such a device could also improve radiosonde recovery rates, and therefore reduce the electronics waste being produced by regular weather balloon launches.