MUSAS: An NSF Community Instrument Facility

MUSAS: An NSF Community Instrument Facility

The Mobile Uncrewed Systems for Atmospheric Science (MUSAS) provides small uncrewed aircraft systems to capture high quality, high resolution in-situ measurements of atmospheric processes and phenomena. MUSAS is part of the NSF-sponsored CIF program, which provides the atmospheric sciences research community access to specialized instrumentation for field and laboratory-based studies and educational outreach. MUSAS supports atmospheric research, including boundary layer processes, coastal circulations, aerosol processes, turbulence and turbulent fluxes, surface-atmosphere exchanges, severe weather, and in high-latitude environments. 

MUSAS fosters education and engagement of scientists from a variety of backgrounds by offering activities that include education deployments to advance learning, middle and high school education, research experiences for community college students, seminars, small UAS training courses with microcredentials and faculty mentorships to grow community. Through the microcredential course, participants will become more familiar with UAS and able to consider how to utilize UAS in their work. Click here to find out more about the microcredentials.

How to request the MUSAS instruments and facilities

MUSAS is available to support education and outreach (Track 1), and scientific research (Tracks 2 and 3). Requests for educational and outreach should aim to provide hands-on student training in field and/or laboratory based observational research and/or public outreach through coordinated events. For science requests, research-based requests can be for a single facility (Track 2) or part of a major field campaign (Track 3).

To request more information, please fill out our Initial Contact Request form and one of our Facility Directors will reach out to you about your Facility and Instrumentation Request Process (FIRP) request.

MUSAS is supported by the National Science Foundation, Award No. AGS 2431471