Abstract Altitude-controlled balloons hold great promise for performing high-priority scientific investigations of Venus’s atmosphere and geological phenomena, including tectonic and volcanic activity, as demonstrated by a number of recent Earth-based experiments. In this paper, we explore a concept of operations where multiple autonomous, altitude-controlled balloons monitor explosive volcanic activity on Venus through infrasound microbarometers, and autonomously navigate the uncertain wind field to perform follow-on observations of detected events of interest. We propose a novel autonomous guidance technique for altitude-controlled balloons in Venus’s uncertain wind field, and show the approach can result in an increase of up to 63% in the number of close-up observations of volcanic events compared to passive drifters, and a 16% increase compared to ground-in-the-loop guidance. The results are robust to uncertainty in the wind field, and hold across large changes in the frequency of explosive volcanic events, sensitivity of the microbarometer detectors, and numbers of aerial platforms.
Highlights We propose a new autonomy architecture for a network of Venus aerobots. A team of autonomous, variable-altitude balloons detects, visits volcanic events. On-board autonomy increases eruptions visited by 63% compared to passive drifters. Results are robust to uncertainty in winds, event frequency, detection sensitivity.
Proximal exploration of Venus volcanism with teams of autonomous buoyancy-controlled balloons
Acta Astronautica ; 208 ; 389-406
2023-03-03
18 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Venus , Venus volcanism , Aerobot , Autonomy , Multi-agent , MDP , Guidance
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