BARREL 4E Ephemeris: Balloon GPS and Magnetic Coordinates for Radiation Belt Studies

BARREL 4E Ephemeris Level 2 data provides geographic and magnetic coordinates from a NASA multi-balloon mission. The dataset contains balloon epoch time, latitude, longitude, and altitude measurements recorded every 4 seconds from over 50 stratospheric balloon flights launched from Antarctica and Sweden between 2013 and 2016. Geographic coordinates were obtained from onboard GPS, while magnetic coordinates were derived using the IRBEM library to study electron precipitation from Earth's radiation belts.

Use Cases

• Modeling magnetic field mapping from the stratosphere to the radiation belts based on derived magnetic coordinates.
• Analyzing temporal and spatial patterns of balloon observations based on 4-second GPS ephemeris data.
• Correlating balloon-based X-ray measurements with in-situ satellite data based on the coordinated campaign design.
• Characterizing the spatial scale of relativistic electron precipitation events based on the multi-balloon array.

Strengths

• Data collected from over 50 balloon flights across four campaigns, providing multiple observational windows.
• Coordinates are recorded at a high temporal resolution of 4 seconds.
• Campaigns were coordinated with the Van Allen Probes mission and other ground-based instruments for validation.

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.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data gathered from onboard GPS units and derived using the International Radiation Belt Environment Modeling (IRBEM) FORTRAN library.

Time Range

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

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 11:40:09.417486; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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