BARREL 2P: Balloon Housekeeping Voltage, Temperature, Current, and Status, 40 s Data

Over 50 stratospheric balloon flights were conducted from 2013 to 2016 in Antarctica and Sweden. The dataset provides housekeeping voltage, temperature, current, and payload status values recorded every 40 seconds by the NASA BARREL mission, which studied electron losses from Earth's radiation belts. It was created to augment the Van Allen Probes mission with measurements of relativistic electron precipitation.

Use Cases

• Monitoring instrument health and environmental conditions based on housekeeping voltage and temperature data.
• Analyzing temporal variations in magnetic fields based on the mention of DC magnetometer measurements.
• Studying spatial scales of relativistic electron precipitation events based on the multi-balloon array design.
• Correlating balloon observations with in-situ satellite measurements from the Van Allen Probes mission.

Strengths

• Data collected from over 50 balloon flights across four campaigns from 2013 to 2016.
• Provides the first balloon measurements of relativistic electron precipitation coordinated with in-situ satellite data.
• Measurements were taken at stratospheric altitudes of about 30 km near polar regions.

Limitations

• 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 unreflected differences.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Collected by instruments on small stratospheric balloons launched from Antarctic and Swedish bases.

Time Range

2013 to 2016

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 12:57:17.058277; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Balloon launches from Halley Bay and SANAE IV, Antarctica (2013-2014) and Esrange Space Center, Kiruna, Sweden (2015-2016).