Miniature sensors to advance climate studies, battlefield detection

laboratory in the lower 48 makes weight and size a factor.

“Smaller, lighter is a big deal for us,” Ivey said.

Manginell’s team plans to submit an atmospheric sampling proposal this spring to NASA for something called “ground-truth measurement.” NASA, he said, “has a ton of satellite data, more than they know what to do with,” but the agency needs to use data from ground-based or airborne sensors that physically sniff the gases reported by satellites to calibrate remote instruments.

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who need ground-truth data, have built systems with flask containers using conventional valves that at open flasks and then close them at specific altitudes. The flasks are big, though — perhaps half a liter in size — and heavy, and the valves they require may outgas, ruining the measurements, Manginell said.

Outgassing occurs when the material used for the container releases a gas of its own, contaminating the atmospheric gas trapped in the flask.

The Sandia system “would have 100 of these devices in a package that has a macrovalve on top,” said Manginell. An altimeter sends an electrical pulse that opens the macrovalve to fill the package with air. A small pump builds up pressure, filling the tiny cylinders. “You’d use personal-computer (PC) processors that you can put on a circuit board to operate the miniature system,” he said.

The balloons would have global positioning locators on them. The low weight would make them suitable for balloon and UAV applications. The tiny containers are built of alumina tubing, cheap and more inert than glass.

Data collected by the tiny cylinders also could be used to confirm satellite images of airborne industrial effluents, essential for monitoring cap-and-trade deals.

The release notes that not all potential uses are in the upper atmosphere. Geoscientists drill boreholes for oil and to understand how the Earth formed. “It’s hard to build a mass spectrometer to go down a 2-inch diameter borehole,” Manginell said. “We’ve proposed instead to use our miniature samplers outfitted with microvalves to take samples that can be transported pristinely back to the surface and then examined in a lab.”

In medicine, volatile compounds that people and animals emit are indicative of disease states and stress. “Point-of-care medicine, instead of taking a blood sample, could sample a person’s breath,” Manginell said. “Alcohol gives a gross signal but infections have a high volatile content as well.” The bacteria that give cows tuberculosis produce