BARREL 1H: Balloon Housekeeping Voltage, Temperature, Current, and Status Data

Over 50 stratospheric balloon flights were conducted across four campaigns from 2013 to 2016, launching from Antarctica and Sweden. The dataset contains housekeeping voltage, temperature, current, and payload status values recorded every 40 seconds by the NASA BARREL mission. BARREL was a NASA Living with a Star Mission of Opportunity designed to study electron losses from Earth's Radiation Belts.

Use Cases

• Analyzing temporal variations in instrument health based on voltage and current readings.
• Correlating payload status with environmental conditions based on temperature data.
• Studying the spatial scale of relativistic electron precipitation events using the multi-balloon constellation data mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Data collected from over 50 balloon flights across four separate campaigns.
• Measurements were taken in coordination with the Van Allen Probes mission and other ground-based instruments.
• Provides housekeeping data at a consistent 40-second sampling interval.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The description notes that analog sensor data is based on a nominal layout and some payload differences may not be reflected.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Collected by instrumentation on small stratospheric balloons carrying X-ray spectrometers and DC magnetometers.

Time Range

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

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 04:22:31.590989; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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