Guidance / Submitting Proposals: Guideline Overview

Guidelines : FY2027 Tethered Balloon System Missions

Overview

Editor’s note: The ARM/EMSL call below has officially closed.

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility is planning for deployments of its tethered balloon system (TBS) in fiscal year 2027 (FY2027) for approximately six to eight user-proposed flight missions using ARM TBS baseline instruments, with mission durations of two and three weeks based on deployment location.

Two ARM TBS calls are now open for FY2027. ARM is accepting preliminary proposals for TBS missions as part of its annual facility call while also participating in a joint TBS call with the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL). Like ARM, EMSL is a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science user facility.

Awarded projects from the ARM/EMSL and ARM-only calls will begin no earlier than Thursday, October 1, 2026.

Note: ARM’s ArcticShark uncrewed aerial system (UAS) is also available for the FY2027 calls. Investigators wanting to deploy both the TBS and ArcticShark can indicate their interest in the same letter of intent for the ARM/EMSL call or the same preproposal for the ARM-only call. More information is available through ARM’s Annual Facility Call page.

ARM and TBS Resources

Special Announcement

ARM is now accepting small campaign proposals for additional instrument payload on fiscal year 2026 TBS missions in Alabama and Arizona.

Get More Information

Deployment Information

For FY2027, ARM will consider proposals for TBS missions at ARM’s Southern Great Plains (SGP) atmospheric observatory in Oklahoma and the Bankhead National Forest (BNF) observatory in Alabama.

Proposals will also be considered for the next ARM Mobile Facility deployment, the Desert-Urban SysTem IntegratEd AtmospherIc Monsoon (DUSTIEAIM) field campaign, taking place from June 2026 through September 2027 in Phoenix, Arizona.

Site Details

ARM/EMSL Call

ARM and EMSL are seeking collaborative research applications through the Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science (FICUS) program, which encourages and enables ambitious research projects integrating the expertise and capabilities of multiple user facilities.

Through the new FICUS call, researchers can apply to use EMSL instruments to collect samples of aerosols and volatile organic compounds on ARM TBS flights and then conduct analysis using advanced laboratory techniques at EMSL. For information about the EMSL instruments available for this call, read the ARM/EMSL FICUS FY2027 solicitation.

Proposed research should investigate terrestrial-atmosphere processes, atmospheric boundary-layer processes, and microphysical processes of cloud and precipitation formation through aerosol-cloud interactions toward improved mechanistic representations of these processes in a variety of models. Proposed research should address how these processes affect the water cycle; water availability for energy infrastructure, security, and reliability; and earth system processes, especially following a disturbance.

FICUS applicants may propose to analyze samples previously collected during past missions or from new planned TBS missions in FY2027. Samples collected from previous missions are available from the BNF or as part of ARM’s Coast-Urban-Rural Atmospheric Gradient Experiment (CoURAGE) in the Baltimore, Maryland, area.

Applicants may propose new FY2027 missions for the SGP, BNF, or DUSTIEAIM. The proposed location of the DUSTIEAIM TBS deployment will be in Glendale, Arizona. If the location is a critical consideration of your proposal, please discuss with Dari Dexheimer.

Proposals requesting the EMSL instruments and sample analysis must be submitted to the ARM/EMSL FICUS FY2027 solicitation.

FICUS submissions will require a letter of intent to facilitate the planning of the peer-review process, ensure alignment of proposals to ARM and EMSL missions and capabilities, and assist users in building strong proposals. Letter of intent guidance is available on EMSL’s website.

Letters of intent are due Wednesday, February 4, 2026. FICUS decisions and invitations for full proposals will be sent by Wednesday, March 4, 2026.

EMSL and FICUS Resources

ARM-Only Call

The ARM-only call is for projects that do not require EMSL instruments and sample analysis. Applicants may propose FY2027 TBS missions for the SGP, BNF, or DUSTIEAIM.

In their preproposals, investigators should provide information on mission expectations as listed in the next section. Preproposals must be submitted through ARM’s Propose a Field Campaign page.

The due date to submit preproposals for FY2027 ARM TBS missions is Wednesday, February 4, 2026. Decisions and invitations for full proposals will be sent by the end of February 2026.

Submit Your ARM Preproposal

Propose a Field Campaign

Parameters for Proposing New TBS Missions

Investigators proposing for either call must propose no more than three missions, and requests for multiple missions require strong scientific justification.

Proposed missions are no longer than two weeks in length at the SGP and DUSTIEAIM, and three weeks for missions proposed at the BNF due to existing flight restrictions. Flight operations require the balloon to remain in clear air and below the base of nearby clouds, and sustained winds below 12 meters per second. TBS flights are generally restricted to a maximum altitude limit of 1.5 kilometers above ground level (AGL) at the SGP and BNF, and 1.3 kilometers AGL for DUSTIEAIM. An individual flight typically lasts from a few hours to approximately eight hours with varying flight styles.

Daytime and nighttime operations can be proposed for the BNF, SGP, and DUSTIEAIM. However, nighttime operational approvals have not yet been procured for DUSTIEAIM.

Note: ARM is seeking permissions from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for FY2027 operations at the SGP and BNF sites and for the DUSTIEAIM campaign. This process can take a considerable amount of time and is not always successful.

Proposals for new TBS missions in FY2027 should provide details regarding mission expectations, including:

needed instrumentation
the flight location (SGP, BNF, or DUSTIEAIM)
the desired season or seasons
the desired time of day
the desired altitude
the number and duration of flights required
the desired meteorological conditions during the flight
whether fixed-altitude flights or profiles would be more appropriate for the applicant’s science goals, and where these factors are important for achieving their science goals.

Proposals for flights of non-baseline ARM instruments or guest instruments (including those listed on the TBS baseline instrument web page) will also be considered but will need to be reviewed in consideration of payload constraints.

Overlapping days may be proposed for the TBS and ARM’s ArcticShark UAS at the BNF or SGP; however, there are limitations on how close to each other the two platforms can operate. The minimum separation between the TBS and ArcticShark has not yet been defined for the SGP, but it is expected to be similar to the minimum separation that has been set for the BNF, which is 2 nautical miles.

Research Funding

Please note that for successful proposals, ARM provides the operational and logistical resources to conduct the proposed mission; however, ARM does not provide research funding associated with the mission.

Get More Information: ARM Field Campaign Processes Webinar

For people interested in the ARM-only or ARM/EMSL FICUS calls, ARM hosted a field campaign processes webinar in January 2026. During this webinar, ARM staff gave an overview of the TBS and ArcticShark UAS capabilities, the proposal process, and responsibilities associated with ARM deployments.