Altitude-controlled balloons hold great promise for performing high-priority scientific investigations of Venus's atmosphere and geological phenomena, including tectonic and volcanic activity, as demonstrated by a number of recent Earth-based experiments. In this paper, we explore a concept of operations where multiple autonomous, altitude-controlled balloons monitor explosive volcanic activity on Venus through infrasound microbarometers, and autonomously navigate the uncertain wind field to perform follow-on observations of detected events of interest. We propose a novel autonomous guidance technique for altitude-controlled balloons in Venus's uncertain wind field, and show the approach can result in an increase of up to 63% in the number of close-up observations of volcanic events compared to passive drifters, and a 16% increase compared to ground-in-the-loop guidance. The results are robust to uncertainty in the wind field, and hold across large changes in the frequency of explosive volcanic events, sensitivity of the microbarometer detectors, and numbers of aerial platforms.

翻译：高度可控气球在开展金星大气及地质现象（包括构造与火山活动）的高优先度科学研究中展现出巨大潜力，近期多项地球实验已证实了这一点。本文探索了一种运行概念：通过多架自主高度可控气球搭载次声微气压计监测金星爆炸性火山活动，并自主导航于不确定风场中，对已探测到的目标事件进行后续观测。针对金星不确定风场中的高度可控气球，我们提出了一种新型自主制导技术。研究表明，与被动漂移平台相比，该方法可使火山事件近距离观测次数提升高达63%，相较于地面闭环制导提升16%。该结果对风场不确定性具有鲁棒性，并且在爆炸性火山活动频率、微气压计探测器灵敏度以及航空平台数量的显著变化范围内保持稳定。