Design Environment for a Maneuverable Lighter-Than-Air Platform
In 2004, NASA explored the development of a maneuverable, lighter-than-air (LTA), stratospheric vehicle that could serve as a stable, high-altitude, long duration platform for Astrophysics, Planetary, and Earth Science applications. The approach was to investigate advances in NASA balloon technologies, recent high-altitude solar powered aircraft research, and current and past DoD funded LTA projects towards a feasibility assessment of designing a maneuverable platform capable of lifting science payloads to altitudes of 70,000 to 110,000 ft (21-34 km), optimized for payload performance, unobstructed Earth and sky viewing, and station keeping.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center personnel lead a team of government and industry collaborators in the development a maneuverable vehicle concept. A significant aspect of this work involved understanding the environment in which the maneuverable craft will operate. The environmental parameters of importance for a maneuverable platform include winds, solar and infrared radiation, and temperature and pressure profiles of the atmosphere. The Design Environment is the collection of environment parameters and their statistical distributions that will be used as the baseline environment for a conceptual design of the maneuverable platform.
Global Aerospace Corporation developed statistical descriptions of relevant environment parameters that assisted the team personnel in the conceptual design of the maneuverable platform.