Releasing a Weather Balloon

The NASA Alta X quadcopter sits in a field in Missoula, Montana, outfitted with a structure engineered at Langley Research Center to carry a radiosonde (top left) and an anemometer (top right) into the air. The drone and its payload were part of the August 2024 FireSense campaign, which looked at the applicability of using controllable, repeatable airborne measurements to more accurately predict fire and smoke behavior.