BARREL 1C: Balloon Housekeeping Voltage, Temperature, Current, and Status

BARREL was a NASA Living with a Star Mission of Opportunity designed to study electron losses from Earth's Radiation Belts. Over 50 stratospheric balloons were launched from Antarctica and Sweden between 2013 and 2016, carrying X-ray spectrometers and magnetometers. This Level 2 dataset provides housekeeping voltage, temperature, current, and payload status values recorded every 40 seconds.

Use Cases

• Monitoring instrument health and performance based on voltage, temperature, and current readings.
• Analyzing temporal patterns of payload status to correlate with scientific observations.
• Studying the operational environment of stratospheric balloon payloads based on housekeeping sensor data.
• Correlating balloon instrument state with X-ray spectrometer and magnetometer measurements mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Data is collected at a regular 40-second cadence, providing consistent time-series.
• Over 50 balloon flights were launched across four campaigns from 2013 to 2016.
• Mission was coordinated with the Van Allen Probes and other ground and space-based instruments.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The description notes analog sensor data is based on a nominal layout and some payloads may have small differences not reflected here.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data collected by instruments on BARREL stratospheric balloons.

Time Range

Campaigns conducted in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 04:29:45.777595; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Balloon launches from Halley Bay and SANAE IV bases in Antarctica, and the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden.