Latest news with #MichaelNayak
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
DARPA Tried Using the Earth's Atmosphere as a Giant Sensor and Detected Something Interesting
While trying to determine if it could use the entire Earth's atmosphere as a massive sensor, the US military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) made a highly unusual detection. The agency — which has overseen the development of cutting-edge military technologies and out-there concepts for decades — encountered the distant signature of a SpaceX Falcon 9 reentering the atmosphere during a test in New Mexico last year. The goal of DARPA's AtmoSense program, which kicked off in late 2020, is to determine whether acoustic and electromagnetic waves propagating through the Earth's atmosphere could allow the US military to detect and locate major events and disturbances, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, across the planet. The idea is to eventually hone in on the location of illicit underground explosions or "other national security-relevant events" — highly relevant data for the US military. And according to a recent DARPA statement, the program works surprisingly well. In 2024, DARPA conducted two field tests in New Mexico, detonating six 1-ton and 10-ton controlled explosions to test the concept. The agency found that AtmoSense models accurately predicted these blasts, giving credence to the idea of using the atmosphere as a massive sensor. But while DARPA scientists were poring over the data, they found a strange and unexpected disturbance. "As the team was looking at the data, they saw a huge drop in what's called total electron content that puzzled them," said AtmoSense program manager Michael Nayak in the blurb. Nayak used a simple analogy to explain what had happened. "Imagine that you have water going through a hose," he explained. "That's a flow of electrons, and if you put your fist in front of the hose, you'll notice a significant drop in water volume coming out of the hose." The apparently culprit? They realized the drop in electron content correlated to a Falcon 9 rocket reentering on the same day as the controlled New Mexico blasts. "Then they decided to pull other SpaceX reentry data, across dozens of launches, to see if they could spot a similar electron drop," said Nayak. "The phenomenon is highly repeatable. We discovered an unplanned new technique for identifying objects entering the earth's atmosphere." According to the program manager, its latest tests prove that the system works, potentially giving the US military a potent detection system. "High-resolution surface-to-space simulation of acoustic waves was considered impossible before the program began, but we accomplished it," he said. "We can now model across six orders of magnitude, in 3D, what happens to the energy emanating from a small, meters-scale disturbance as it expands up into the atmosphere to propagate over thousands of kilometers, and potentially around the world," Nayak added. More on DARPA: DARPA Requests Plans for "Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures"
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
DARPA accidentally detects SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket reentry by listening to Earth's atmosphere
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Researchers with the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have successfully used Earth's atmosphere as a sensor to detect a distant disturbance. DARPA's AtmoSense program aims to study how sound waves or electromagnetic frequencies travel through Earth's atmosphere, and to find ways to use these waves as a "global sensor" to detect and pinpoint disturbances such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. But researchers with the AtmoSense program found that, when studying waves created by controlled explosions in New Mexico, they were also able to detect atmospheric disturbances created by a Space Falcon 9 rocket reentry. "The phenomenon is highly repeatable," said Michael Nayak, AtmoSense program manager, in a DARPA statement. "We discovered an unplanned new technique for identifying objects entering the earth's atmosphere." Nayak explained that the technique works by measuring flows of electrons in the atmosphere, comparing them to water streaming from a hose. "That's a flow of electrons, and if you put your fist in front of the hose, you'll notice a significant drop in water volume coming out of the hose," Nayak said in the statement. Once the team noticed the dip in electron content, they were able to pinpoint its location and determine that it correlated with a Falcon 9 reentry the same day. The data showed that the AtmoSesne project can detect more than just ground-based disturbances like earthquakes, but also those that take place in air or space that are "of interest to national security," DARPA wrote in the statement. RELATED STORIES: — What is DARPA? — DARPA picks Northrop Grumman to develop 'lunar railroad' concept — DARPA wants new ideas for space weapons Researchers with the program are planning a virtual workshop in April to share their progress with both the scientific and national security communities and to explore potential applications for AtmoSense. DARPA's aim for the program is to be eventually be able to sense atmospheric waves created from events anywhere in the world.
