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The Perlan Project
From: Michael Batalia <batalia@xxxxxxxxxxxx>The Perlan Project
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Volcanologist Community:
My name is Michael Batalia, and I am a scientific leader of the Perlan Project (www.perlanproject.org). Daniel Bowman at UNC-CH suggested I reach out to this community given my scientific interests. Briefly, The Perlan Project is building a near-space sailplane to fly to stratospheric altitudes without any propulsion. The Airbus Group is the major sponsor of the Perlan II sailplane, and the aircraft will be test flown later this summer in California. If all tests proceed as planned, The Perlan II will be moved to Argentina in the summer of 2016 to attempt stratospheric flights. My role on the project is developing STEM and scientific programing. In addition to basic meteorological instrumentation, we have designed payload bays on the Perlan II to fly up to six cubesat-format experimental packages per flight.
We are looking for scientific partners and institutions who would like to design and fly experiments with us. The Perlan II is a unique platform. It will give us access to what NASA likes to call "the ignorosphere". LIke a stratospheric balloon flight, the Perlan II will allow access to the stratosphere with a clean, surrounding environment (no propulsion; no emissions), but unlike a stratospheric balloon flight, the Perlan II will allow us the ability to "fly-to-target" to explore clouds or other atmospheric features. In addition, we envision the ability to perform a new class of climate engineering experiments where we release small amounts of materials into the surrounding stratosphere, then observe and sample the resulting chemistry and distribution.
Given this community's interest in how volcanoes propel material into the atmosphere, our interests look to overlap. I welcome any conversation, and my contact information is listed below. Please take a look at the Perlan Project website for more details on our missions.
Sincerely,
Michael Batalia, PhD
batalia@xxxxxxxxxxxx
336-817-4066
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