BARREL 3C: Balloon Housekeeping Voltage, Temperature, Current, and Status Data

Antarctic and Arctic stratospheric balloon campaigns collected housekeeping voltage, temperature, current, and payload status values every 40 seconds. The BARREL Mission, a NASA Living with a Star Mission of Opportunity, launched over 50 small balloons from Halley Bay, SANAE IV, and Kiruna between 2013 and 2016 to study electron precipitation from Earth's radiation belts. Data was collected to augment the Van Allen Probes mission.

Use Cases

• Monitoring payload health and status based on housekeeping voltage and current values
• Analyzing environmental conditions during balloon flights based on temperature data
• Studying temporal variations in balloon instrumentation correlated with relativistic electron precipitation events
• Correlating balloon-based X-ray spectrometer measurements with in-situ plasma wave and particle data from other missions

Strengths

• Data collected from over 50 balloon launches across four campaigns
• Time-series data with a regular 40-second sampling interval
• Coordinated with the Van Allen Probes mission and other ground/space instruments in 2015-2016 campaigns

Limitations

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

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 03:36:45.155478; freshness should be verified

Geography

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