BARREL 2C: Balloon Housekeeping Voltage, Temperature, Current, and Status

BARREL 2C housekeeping data provides voltage, temperature, current, and payload status values recorded every 40 seconds. The BARREL Mission was a NASA Living with a Star project involving over 50 stratospheric balloon launches from Antarctica and Sweden between 2013 and 2016. It was designed to study electron precipitation from Earth's Radiation Belts in coordination with the Van Allen Probes mission.

Use Cases

• Monitor payload health and instrument performance based on voltage and current readings.
• Analyze environmental conditions affecting balloon experiments based on temperature data.
• Correlate payload status with X-ray spectrometer and magnetometer observations.
• Study temporal variations in housekeeping parameters over balloon flight durations.

Strengths

• Data collected from over 50 balloon launches across four campaigns.
• Provides measurements coordinated with the Van Allen Probes mission.
• Records housekeeping parameters at a regular 40-second cadence.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The description notes some payload sensor layouts may differ and data may require clarification.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

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 03:59:29.120487; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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