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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering
Balloon Borne Mars Research Platforms, Sean Michael Hancock
Balloon Borne Mars Research Platforms, Sean Michael Hancock
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations
Aerial platforms can fill a measurement gap between orbiters and rovers, providing planetary scale high resolution in situ measurements, access to scientifically interesting terrain that is either inaccessible or hazardous to rovers, and serve as a planet-wide delivery platforms to deploy surface probes and rovers to areas inaccessible given existing entry, descent, and landing systems. A permanent robotic outpost on the Martian surface can utilize locally-derived hydrogen as a lifting gas for balloon systems deployed from Mars. That approach can simplify the inflation and launch of aerial vehicles while allowing for a long duration deployment campaign that is not constrained …
Inversion And Analysis Of Remotely Sensed Atmospheric Water Vapor Measurements At 940nm, Jack Cutler Larsen
Inversion And Analysis Of Remotely Sensed Atmospheric Water Vapor Measurements At 940nm, Jack Cutler Larsen
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations
The understanding and acceptance of remotely sensed atmospheric data depends strongly on the steps taken to characterize experiment error and validate observations through comparisons to other independent measurements. A formal error analysis of the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II (SAGE II) water vapor operational inversion algorithm is performed and compared to previous results. Random measurement errors were characterized by segmented least-squares profile fitting of the slant path absorption which found the error to be uncorrelated in the stratosphere with estimated variances significantly smaller than expected from 18-30 km. Estimates of null space error were developed from radiosonde hygrometers in …