BARREL: 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 project, collected housekeeping voltage, temperature, current, and payload status values every 40 seconds to study electron losses from Earth's Radiation Belts. Observations were made from Antarctic and Arctic launch sites at altitudes of about 30 km.

Use Cases

• Monitoring instrument health and environmental conditions based on housekeeping voltage, temperature, and current data.
• Studying temporal variations in electron precipitation based on payload status and X-ray spectrometer measurements.
• Correlating balloon observations with in-situ measurements from the Van Allen Probes mission.
• Characterizing the spatial scale of precipitation at relativistic energies based on the balloon constellation data.

Strengths

• Data collected from over 50 balloon flights across four campaigns.
• Time-series data with a regular 40-second sampling interval.
• Coordinated with other major space-based instruments like the Van Allen Probes.

Limitations

• Analog sensor data is based on a nominal layout; some payloads may have small differences not reflected.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• 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 03:34:57.260495; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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