Infrasonic propagation modeling of orbital launch vehicles

Abstract

Over the last two years, NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility has been launching medium lift rockets for experimental and space station resupply missions. These launches have been a great opportunity to use the rocket-generated infrasound as a repeatable source to study the long range propagation over different seasons. For some of the launches during this period, two, 20-m arrays were deployed along different directions from the launch site. To increase the number of available sensors for comparison to three-dimensional propagation model results, data from the US Array was incorporated into the study. The US Array data significantly increased the range and azimuths used to compare the propagation modeling and measurement results. Calculated and measured transmission losses will be discussed.