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The Antares Explosion Observed by the USArray: An Unprecedented Collection of Infrasound Phases Recorded from the Same Event

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Infrasound Monitoring for Atmospheric Studies

Abstract

On October 28, 2014, the launch of the Antares 130 rocket failed just after liftoff from Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia. In addition to one infrasound station of the International Monitoring Network (IMS), the explosion was largely recorded by the Transportable USArray (TA) up to distances of 1000 km. Overall, 180 infrasound arrivals were identified as tropospheric, stratospheric or thermospheric phases on 74 low-frequency sensors of the TA. The range of celerity for those phases is exceptionally broad, from 360 m/s for some tropospheric arrivals, down to 160 m/s for some thermospheric arrivals. Ray tracing simulations provide a consistent description of infrasound propagation. Using phase-dependent propagation tables, the source location is found 2 km east of ground truth information with a difference in origin time of 2 s. The detection capability of the TA at the time of the event is quantified using a frequency-dependent semiempirical attenuation. By accounting for geometrical spreading and dissipation, an accurate picture of the ground return footprint of stratospheric arrivals as well as the wave attenuation are recovered. The high-quality data and unprecedented amount and variety of observed infrasound phases represents a unique dataset for statistically evaluating atmospheric models, numerical propagation modeling, and localization methods which are used as effective verification tools for the nuclear explosion monitoring regime.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CEA, DAM, DIF, F-91297, Arpajon, France

    Julien Vergoz, Alexis Le Pichon & Christophe Millet

Authors
  1. Julien Vergoz
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  2. Alexis Le Pichon
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  3. Christophe Millet
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Correspondence to Julien Vergoz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. CEA, DAM, DIF, Arpajon, France

    Alexis Le Pichon

  2. CEA, DAM, DIF, Arpajon, France

    Elisabeth Blanc

  3. SHTI, LATMOS/IPSL, Guyancourt, France

    Alain Hauchecorne

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 9.1.

Table 9.1 Exhaustive list of measured phases and information relative to the location obtained from ray tracing propagation tables. From left to right: station name, phase name, range, arrival time, back azimuth (only for I51 GB), peak-to-peak amplitude in relevant frequency band, celerity model, and azimuthal deviation obtained from ray tracing (only for I51 GB), time residual, back azimuth residual, and final celerity obtained after location. The color of each line represents arrival type: red is tropospheric, green is stratospheric, blue is thermospheric, and orange indicates that the phase has not been used for location because it was not modeled
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Vergoz, J., Le Pichon, A., Millet, C. (2019). The Antares Explosion Observed by the USArray: An Unprecedented Collection of Infrasound Phases Recorded from the Same Event. In: Le Pichon, A., Blanc, E., Hauchecorne, A. (eds) Infrasound Monitoring for Atmospheric Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75140-5_9

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