Preliminary Results from the ATHENA-OAWL Venture Tech Airborne Mission

摘要

The Atmospheric Transport, Hurricanes and Extratropical Numerical weather prediction using the Optical Autocovariance Wind Lidar (ATHENA-OAWL) is a mission concept proposed as an Earth Venture mission for space based wind profile measurements. An Airborne demonstrator for the ATHENA-OAWL system, is planned for deployment aboard the NASA WB-57 aircraft in May/June 2016. The instrument makes simultaneous measurements at two azimuthally orthogonal line-of-sight to provide u and v components of the horizontal winds. The goals of this deployment are following: (1) Validate and assess the wind measuring capability of the instrument, (2) Evaluate the instrument sensitivity and efficiency, (3) Assess the effects of different atmospheric conditions, and (4) Scale the performance to that of future space mission. Here we will present the validation efforts and preliminary results from this deployment.