Remote controlled blimp

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are increasingly recognised as valuable measurement platforms in atmospheric science. Autonomous UAVs come with legal challenges such as airspace control. We are developing a remote controlled UAV that in a later stage might be upgraded to autonomous use. We chose a lighter-than-air platform, namely a blimp (pressure airship) to benefit from a large range in platform speeds (hovering to about 40 km/h), reasonably large payload, ease of use and the potential to make Lagrangian measurements.



We had a number of successful test flights in 2010 and 2011 and the first science flight (payload including a UV spectrometer and an ozone monitor) in the plume of Masaya volcano, Nicaragua, in March 2011.