BARREL 2M: 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 instruments to measure X-rays from precipitating electrons. This Level 2 dataset provides housekeeping voltage, temperature, current, and payload status values recorded every 40 seconds.

Use Cases

• Monitoring instrument health and environmental conditions based on voltage, temperature, and current readings.
• Analyzing temporal patterns of payload status to understand balloon operation during campaigns.
• Correlating housekeeping data with X-ray spectrometer measurements to study electron precipitation events.
• Studying spatial and temporal variations of electron precipitation across the balloon array mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Data collected from over 50 balloon launches across four campaigns spanning 2013 to 2016.
• Housekeeping values are recorded at a consistent 40-second interval.
• Mission was coordinated with the Van Allen Probes and other ground and space-based instruments.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data collected by instruments on stratospheric balloons launched during the BARREL mission.

Time Range

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

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 03:46:47.608646; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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