DARPA Harnessed the Earth’s Atmosphere as a Gigantic Sensor—Here’s What They Found

When attempting to ascertain whether it could utilize the whole planet as the atmosphere acting like one large sensor , the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) detected something quite extraordinary.

The organization — which has managed the progress of cutting-edge military technologies and out-there concepts For years—encountered the faint signal of a SpaceX Falcon 9 descending into the atmosphere during a test in New Mexico last year.

DARPA’s AtmoSense initiative, launched at the end of 2020, aims to assess if acoustic and electromagnetic waves traveling through the Earth's atmosphere can enable the U.S. military to identify and pinpoint significant occurrences like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions worldwide.

The objective is ultimately to pinpoint the locations of clandestine subterranean blasts or "other nationally significant occurrences" — information that holds great importance for the U.S. military.

And according to a recent DARPA statement The program performs remarkably effectively. In 2024, DARPA carried out two outdoor trials in New Mexico, where they triggered six controlled explosions ranging from one ton to ten tons to evaluate this approach. According to the findings, the AtmoSense models precisely forecasted these events, lending support to the notion of leveraging the atmosphere as an extensive sensing system.

However, as DARPA scientists examined the information, they stumbled upon an unusual and unforeseen disruption.

"When examining the data, the team noticed a significant decline in something known as total electron content, which perplexed them," stated AtmoSense program manager Michael Nayak in the excerpt.

Nayak employed a basic comparison to describe what occurred.

He said, 'Think about water moving through a hose as an analogy for the flow of electrons. If you place your hand over the end of the hose, you’ll see a considerable decrease in the amount of water exiting it.'

It appears the suspect discovered that the decrease in electron density was linked to a Falcon 9 rocket reentry coinciding with the scheduled explosions in New Mexico.

"Nayak stated that they then opted to examine re-entry data from multiple SpaceX launches to determine whether a comparable decrease in electrons was observable. The occurrence is consistently reproducible. This led to the accidental development of a novel method for detecting objects as they enter Earth’s atmosphere," he explained.

As stated by the program manager, their most recent tests demonstrate that the system functions effectively, which could provide the U.S. military with a powerful detection tool.

He stated that high-resolution simulations of acoustic waves from the Earth's surface to space were deemed unachievable prior to the start of the program, yet they managed to achieve it.

"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.

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