The "Glidersonde"is a UAV-deployed environmental sensor suite that is air-deployed and glides into denied or hazardous areas including volcanoes or nuclear emergency, wildland fire or HAZMAT release areas. It can either be released by hand or used with Yankee's commercial Automated Dropsonde Dispenser (ADD) which we tested in the Navy Twin Otter P256, and is and is currently undergoing integration with NASA's Global Hawk for a 2012 test. It measures local scattering, cloud optical depth, ground/sea surface temperatures, SOx, nuclear radiation, aerosol optical depth, as well as in-situ pressure/temperature/humidity/winds like a NCAR RD-94 dropsonde.
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