BARREL 4G: Balloon Housekeeping Voltage, Temperature, Current, and Status

BARREL 4G Data Processing Unit Level 2 data provides housekeeping voltage, temperature, current, and payload status values recorded every 40 seconds. The BARREL Mission was a NASA Living with a Star Mission of Opportunity involving over 50 stratospheric balloon launches from Antarctica and Sweden between 2013 and 2016. It was designed to study electron precipitation from Earth's Radiation Belts in coordination with the Van Allen Probes mission.

Use Cases

• Monitoring payload health and environmental conditions based on voltage, temperature, and current readings.
• Analyzing temporal patterns of balloon instrumentation based on 40-second interval data.
• Correlating balloon-based X-ray spectrometer measurements with in-situ satellite data.
• Studying spatial scales of relativistic electron precipitation based on multi-balloon constellation data.

Strengths

• Data is collected at a high temporal resolution of 40 seconds.
• Over 50 balloon launches were conducted across four campaigns from 2013 to 2016.
• Mission was coordinated with the Van Allen Probes and other ground/space instruments.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The description notes analog sensor data is based on a nominal layout and some payloads may have small differences.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data collected by BARREL balloon instrumentation.

Time Range

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

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 03:32:11.882707; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Launches from Halley Bay, Antarctica; SANAE IV base, Antarctica; and Esrange Space Center, Kiruna, Sweden.