BARREL 4E: Balloon Housekeeping Voltage, Temperature, Current, and Status, 40 s Data

BARREL 4E data provides housekeeping voltage, temperature, current, and payload status values recorded every 40 seconds. The BARREL Mission was a NASA Living with a Star multiple-balloon investigation from 2013 to 2016, launched from Antarctica and Sweden to study electron losses from Earth's Radiation Belts. Over 50 stratospheric balloons carried X-ray spectrometers and magnetometers to measure relativistic electron precipitation.

Use Cases

• Monitor spacecraft system health based on analog voltage, temperature, and current readings.
• Correlate payload status with electron precipitation events measured by X-ray spectrometers.
• Analyze temporal variations in housekeeping data at 40-second intervals for anomaly detection.
• Study the spatial scale of relativistic electron precipitation using balloon constellation data.

Strengths

• Data collected from over 50 balloon flights across four campaigns from 2013 to 2016.
• Provides coordinated measurements with the Van Allen Probes mission and other ground-based instruments.
• Records housekeeping parameters at a consistent 40-second sampling interval.

Limitations

• Analog sensor data is based on a nominal layout; some payload differences may not be 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

Collected by instrument packages on small stratospheric balloons launched from Antarctica and Sweden.

Time Range

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

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 11:36:08.240816; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Balloon launches from Halley Bay and SANAE IV base in Antarctica, and Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden.