Northwest Greenland Active Source Seismic Experiment

Line Starting Position (lat/long): 78.05494 -68.43001 Line Ending Position (lat/long): 78.06791 -68.36563In summer of 2018, the Seismometer to Investigate Ice and Ocean Structure (SIIOS) team conducted a geophysical field investigation on the Greenland ice sheet in northwestern Greenland at a location where a previous airborne radar survey by Palmer et al. (2013) had detected the signatures of a subglacial lake. The field site is located approximately 50 km north of the town of Qaanaaq. This site was chosen for the SIIOS project as it provides an opportunity for studying how a lander station could be used to detect subsurface water at an icy-ocean world. The purpose of the investigation was to confirm the presence of the subglacial lake and to measure its physical properties such as seismic impedance, as well as to estimate its depth and volume. One component of the investigation consisted of an active source seismic survey that was used to create a reflection image of the lake, as well as to measure the ice-bottom reflection coefficient. The survey was conducted along a roughly northeast oriented traverse, which started above the subglacial lake and crossed the lake’s eastern boundary.Funding for this work was provided by the NASA Planetary Science and Technology Through Analog Research (PSTAR) Grant # 80NSSC17K0229

MICRO-AIR VEHICLE CONTROL USING MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS SENSORS:

Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) are small unmanned aircraft that are highly sensitive to environmental disturbances causing dynamic changes in attitude and flight stability compared to more traditional unmanned air vehicles. Controlling the stability of an MAV is difficult and a significant research issue. The goal of this project is to perform a proof of concept study based on literature to demonstrate that Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) sensors can control the longitudinal stability of an MAV. MEMS sensors, specifically flow sensors used in this project, predict perturbations and aerodynamic effects which is critical for MAV performance because flight predictions can be used to prevent stall and failure in an MAV. The project focused on developing a control system that implemented MEMS sensors on a wing section and was tested in The University of Arizona’s Educational Wind Tunnel

Micro-Air Vehicle Control Using Microelectromechanical Systems Sensors

Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) are small unmanned aircraft that are highly sensitive to environmental disturbances causing dynamic changes in attitude and flight stability compared to more traditional unmanned air vehicles. Controlling the stability of an MAV is difficult and a significant research issue. The goal of this project is to perform a proof of concept study based on literature to demonstrate that Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) sensors can control the longitudinal stability of an MAV. MEMS sensors, specifically flow sensors used in this project, predict perturbations and aerodynamic effects which is critical for MAV performance because flight predictions can be used to prevent stall and failure in an MAV. The project focused on developing a control system that implemented MEMS sensors on a wing section and was tested in The University of Arizona’s Educational Wind Tunnel

Micro-Air Vehicle Control Using Microelectromechanical Systems Sensors

Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) are small unmanned aircraft that are highly sensitive to environmental disturbances causing dynamic changes in attitude and flight stability compared to more traditional unmanned air vehicles. Controlling the stability of an MAV is difficult and a significant research issue. The goal of this project is to perform a proof of concept study based on literature to demonstrate that Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) sensors can control the longitudinal stability of an MAV. MEMS sensors, specifically flow sensors used in this project, predict perturbations and aerodynamic effects which is critical for MAV performance because flight predictions can be used to prevent stall and failure in an MAV. The project focused on developing a control system that implemented MEMS sensors on a wing section and was tested in The University of Arizona's Educational Wind Tunnel

The Deployment of the Seismometer to Investigate Ice and Ocean Structure (SIIOS) in Northwest Greenland: An experiment to study icy ocean world seismic deployments

In anticipation of future spacecraft missions to icy ocean worlds, the Seismometer to Investigate Ice and Ocean Structure (SIIOS) was funded by NASA to prepare for seismologic investigations of these worlds. During the summer of 2018, the SIIOS team deployed a seismic experiment on the Greenland Ice Sheet situated approximately 80 km north of Qaanaaq, Greenland. The deployment included one Trillium 120 s Posthole (TPH) broadband seismometer, thirteen Silicon Audio flight-candidate seismometers, five Sercel L28 4.5 Hz geophones, and one HTI 60-min hydrophone. Seismometers were buried 1 m deep in the firn in a cross-shaped array centered on a co-located TPH, hydrophone, and Silicon Audio instrument. One part of the array consisted of Silicon Audio and Sercel Geophones situated 1 m from the center of the array in the ordinal directions. A second set of four Silicon Audio instruments situated 1 km from the center of the array, in the cardinal directions. A mock-lander spacecraft was placed at the array center and instrumented with four Silicon Audio seismometers. We performed an active-source experiment and a passive-listening experiment that lasted for approximately 12 days. The active-source experiment consisted of 9-12 sledgehammer strikes to an aluminum plate at ten separate locations up to 100 m from the array center. The passive experiment recorded the ice-sheet ambient background noise, as well as local and regional events. Both datasets will be used to quantify differences in spacecraft instrumentation deployment strategies and for evaluating science capabilities for single-station and small-aperture seismic arrays in future geophysical missions. Our initial results indicate that the flight-candidate seismometer performs comparably to the TPH at frequencies above 0.1 Hz and that instruments coupled to the mock-lander perform comparably to ground-based instrumentation in the frequency band of 0.01-10 Hz. For future icy ocean world missions, a deck-coupled seismometer would perform similarly to a ground-based deployment.NASA PSTAR Grant #80NSSC17K0229 and NASA NESSF # 80NSSC18K126