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

The BARREL mission collected data from campaigns in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. It provides housekeeping voltage, temperature, current, and payload status values recorded every 40 seconds from over 50 stratospheric balloons launched from Antarctica and Sweden. The data was produced by NASA to study electron precipitation from Earth's radiation belts.

Use Cases

• Monitoring payload health and environmental conditions based on voltage, temperature, and current readings.
• Studying temporal variations in electron precipitation based on payload status and mission timing.
• Correlating balloon observations with satellite data like Van Allen Probes based on the coordinated campaign design.
• Analyzing spatial scales of relativistic electron precipitation based on the balloon array deployment across magnetic local time.

Strengths

• Data collected from over 50 balloon flights across four campaigns.
• Values recorded at a consistent 40-second sampling interval.
• Coordinated with other major space physics missions like Van Allen Probes.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The description notes analog sensor data is nominal 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

Measured by instruments on stratospheric balloons.

Time Range

Campaigns conducted in January-February 2013, 2014, and August 2015, 2016.

Geography

Launches from Halley Bay, Antarctica; SANAE IV base, Antarctica; and Esrange Space Center, Kiruna, Sweden.