BARREL 2X: Fast-Resolution Bremsstrahlung X-ray Spectra from Balloon Campaigns

Antarctic and Arctic stratospheric balloon campaigns collected this data. The dataset contains six channels of fast time resolution (50 ms) Bremsstrahlung X-ray spectra from the BARREL mission, designed to study electron precipitation from Earth's radiation belts. It was produced by NASA as part of the Living with a Star program, with campaigns conducted from 2013 to 2016.

Use Cases

• Modeling relativistic electron precipitation events based on the six-channel X-ray spectrometer data.
• Analyzing spatial scales of electron precipitation based on the multi-balloon array observations.
• Correlating balloon-based X-ray measurements with in-situ satellite data from the Van Allen Probes mission.
• Studying temporal variations in Bremsstrahlung X-ray spectra using the 50-millisecond time resolution.

Strengths

• Provides six distinct energy channels (FSPC1a, FSPC1b, FSPC1c, FSPC2, FSPC3, FSPC4) covering an energy range from 0 MeV to 1.5 MeV.
• Features fast time resolution of 50 milliseconds, enabling detailed temporal analysis.
• Data was collected from over 50 stratospheric balloon flights across four campaigns from 2013 to 2016.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.
• Data files are in specialized formats (BIN, PDF, TEXT, HTML), which may require specific tools for processing.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Measured by X-ray spectrometers and DC magnetometers carried on small stratospheric balloons.

Time Range

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

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 12:37:20.343268; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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