System and method for airborne geophysical exploration

A system for airborne geophysical exploration over the ground, the system comprising:

• first and second towing bodies configured to be towed behind an aircraft in flight in a vertically spaced-apart relation, the first and second towing bodies including respective first and second magnetometer measurement instruments;
• a ground station located at a surface of the ground, the ground station including a third magnetometer measurement instrument;
• each of the first, second and third magnetometer measurement instruments comprising:
• a magnetometer configured to collect total field magnitude data to contribute to magnetic vertical gradient data relative to magnetic crustal anomalies of geological origin and variations in an ambient magnetic field above the ground,
• the magnetometer being an ultra-high resolution aeromagnetic configured laser helium optical scalar magnetometer utilizing a magnetically-driven spin precession (MSP) resonance locked-oscillator resonance mode having a cell of metastable helium-4 atoms optically pumped and monitored by a circularly polarized beam of radiation,
• the total field magnitude data are measured by sensing changes in absorption that occur in the optically pumped helium used to lock a tracking oscillator to the resonance frequency of the helium-4 gas, and
• a navigational apparatus configured to collect location, time, and inertial data substantially simultaneously with the total field magnitude data to provide position-correlated measurements thereof;
• and
• the first, second, and third magnetometer measurement instruments being activated during a flight operation of the aircraft over the surface area being subject to the geophysical exploration.

A system for airborne geophysical exploration over the ground, the system comprising:

• first and second towing bodies configured to be towed behind an aircraft in flight in a vertically spaced-apart relation, the first and second towing bodies including respective first and second magnetometer measurement instruments;
• a ground station located at a surface of the ground, the ground station including a third magnetometer measurement instrument;
• each of the first, second and third magnetometer measurement instruments comprising:
• a magnetometer configured to collect total field magnitude data to contribute to magnetic vertical gradient data relative to magnetic crustal anomalies of geological origin and variations in an ambient magnetic field above the ground,
• the magnetometer being an ultra-high resolution aeromagnetic configured laser helium optical vector magnetometer utilizing a magnetically-driven spin precession (MSP) resonance locked-oscillator resonance mode having a cell of metastable helium-4 atoms optically pumped and monitored by a circularly polarized beam of radiation,
• the total field magnitude data are measured by sensing changes in absorption that occur in the optically pumped helium used to lock a tracking oscillator to the resonance frequency of the helium-4 gas, and
• a navigational apparatus configured to collect location, time, and inertial data substantially simultaneously with the total field magnitude data to provide position-correlated measurements thereof;
• the first, second, and third magnetometer measurement instruments being activated during a flight operation of the aircraft over the ground being subject to the geophysical exploration;
• a post-survey computing device including a processor, memory, and an input communicatively interconnected by a busing architecture;
• and
• the memory accessible to the processor, the memory including processor-executable instructions that, when executed, cause the processor to:
• receive at the input the total field magnitude data, and the location, time, and inertial data from each of the first, second, and third magnetometers,
• process the total field magnitude data, and the location, time, and inertial data from each of the first, second, and third magnetometers to generate the magnetic vertical gradient data, and
• generate a total field and vertical gradient plot.