BARREL 3B: Balloon Housekeeping Voltage, Temperature, Current, and Status, 40 s Data

Over 50 stratospheric balloons were launched across four campaigns from 2013 to 2016. The BARREL Mission, a NASA Living with a Star investigation, collected housekeeping voltage, temperature, current, and payload status values every 40 seconds to study electron losses from Earth's Radiation Belts. Data was collected from launch sites in Antarctica and Sweden at stratospheric altitudes near 30 km.

Use Cases

• Correlating electron precipitation events with plasma wave activity based on the mission's coordination with Van Allen Probes and other instruments.
• Characterizing the spatial scale of relativistic electron precipitation based on the balloon array spread across magnetic local time.
• Studying temporal variations in payload health and environmental conditions based on 40-second housekeeping data.
• Analyzing stratospheric magnetic field variations based on the DC magnetometer mentioned in the mission description.

Strengths

• Data collected from over 50 balloon flights across four campaigns spanning 2013 to 2016.
• Time-series data recorded at a regular 40-second interval.
• Mission designed to provide coordinated measurements with comprehensive in-situ data from Van Allen Probes.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data collected by instrumentation on BARREL stratospheric balloons.

Time Range

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

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 03:37:17.205993; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Launch sites in Antarctica (Halley Bay, SANAE IV) and Sweden (Esrange Space Center, Kiruna).