BARREL Status Report #14 August 23, 2016

BARREL Status Report #14

August 23, 2016

We had two great flights with BARREL Flights 4C and 4D. Both payloads survived the night and caught the Van Allen Probe conjunction early in the morning. Payload 4C also caught a conjunction with MMS yesterday though it doesn’t look like any precipitation was observed during the conjunction. We did see relativistic precipitation on both payloads when they were about 100 km apart so this will provide us with some information about the spatial distribution at smaller scales than we obtained during our Antarctic campaigns. Both flights were terminated on August 22 due to their location.  Flight 4D was terminated at 1321 UT and Flight 4C was terminated at 1533 UT. The payloads landed about 12 km apart and both were recovered earlier today. We were very pleased to get some longer flights and are now well into turnaround. The next launch opportunity is tomorrow (Wednesday) at 1700 local time in Sweden. 

Robyn

BARREL Status Report #12 August 17, 2016

BARREL Status Report #12

August 17, 2016

BARREL Flight 4B was terminated this morning at 0350 UT. The balloon started with a nice southerly trajectory, so we thought we might get a long flight out of it. But, it took a sharp turn to the west right after sunrise and had to be cut down as it approached the mountains. Despite the relatively short flight, we caught all of the RBSP conjunction we were targeting, and even had some substorm activity. We saw a very bright relativistic precipitation event which may have been associated with that substorm. The payload was recovered in very good shape earlier today. Note that this payload was also carrying the Univ. of Houston TEC experiment. We’re excited to see if they saw any change in total electron content due to the energetic precipitation! 

The Van Allen Probes EFW team is now requesting playback of burst data from our first flight and they are planning data collections for the next conjunctions. We will not be launching on Thursday due to the predicted flight trajectory (climb out is mostly west which shortens the flight substantially). So, the next launch attempt is likely to be on Friday. I’ll send another update then. 

Robyn

NASA's BARREL Mission in Sweden

A BARREL team member recovers the second payload after it landed. 

 

The BARREL team is at Esrange Space Center near Kiruna, Sweden, launching a series of six scientific payloads on miniature scientific balloons. The NASA-funded BARREL – which stands for Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses – primarily measures X-rays in Earth’s atmosphere near the North and South Poles. These X-rays are produced by electrons raining down into the atmosphere from two giant swaths of radiation that surround Earth, called the Van Allen belts. Learning about the radiation near Earth helps us to better protect our satellites. 

 

Several of the BARREL balloons also carry instruments built by undergraduate students to measure the total electron content of Earth’s ionosphere, as well as the low-frequency electromagnetic waves that help to scatter electrons into Earth’s atmosphere. Though about 90 feet in diameter, the BARREL balloons are much smaller than standard football stadium-sized scientific balloons.

 

This is the fourth campaign for the BARREL mission. BARREL is led by Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The undergraduate student instrument team is led by the University of Houston and funded by the Undergraduate Student Instrument Project out of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. For more information on NASA’s scientific balloon program, visit: www.nasa.gov/scientificballoons. 

 

Image credit: NASA/Montana State University/Arlo Johnson

BARREL Daily update Aug. 15th 2016

Update Summary

We had a successful launch and will hopefully have a second this coming Tuesday. NOAA expects that there may be a small High Speed Stream (HSS) with velocities toping out at about 400 Km/s hitting Earth around the 16th. There may be another HSS coming around Aug. 20th. 

News from Kiruna

Next possible launch date - Tuesday Aug 16th

Payloads up:

none

Payloads coming/which came down:

4A Launched: 22:24 UT Aug. 13th - 05:40 UT Aug. 14th 

News from Van Allen Probes:
Summary

EMFISIS has extra burst requests in for the periods near Van Allen conjunctions out through the 20th

EMFISIS

Chorus waves were observed by both spacecraft (better conjunction with RSBPA) during the precipitation event observed by BARREL. 

News from MMS: 
MMS team needs to know within 24 hours if you would like them to download data. E-mail Drew Turner or Allison Jaynes if you would like them to collect data in a specific region/time for conjunction studies.

News from THEMIS: 

As an update, the THEMIS team have enabled fast survey captures at
the L-shell of BARREL and the neighboring inner magnetosphere (L> ~3)
for the context of possible conjunctions with this BARREL campaign.
Within these fast survey intervals, thye also trigger particle and wave
bursts to capture high-frequency waves (whistler-mode).

This special data collection scheme is implemented on the three inner
probes for Aug. 10-25 (starting from Aug. 11 for TH-D), based on your
estimated interval of this BARREL campaign.

News from Cluster:

No new news

News from Firebird:

We did reset the firebird spacecraft and are now taking data at a 50ms cadence continuously to cover BARREL so you can probably add that to your next update.

News from AeroCube 6:

AC6 was operating and had a pass over Kiruna after our balloon was terminated. However, they also observed some structure in the observed electrons. 

News from EISCAT:

No new News 

News from ABOVE2:

We will try for a Tuesday evening launch (Aug 16) in order to have the balloon in the air on Aug 17th UTC . Surface weather looks good, there is a good conjunction with RBSP, and a recurrent coronal hole is likely to be geoeffective. NOAA is calling for a G1 (minor) storm on the 16th, although the exact timing is very uncertain. Teams in Calgary/Seattle/Edmonton are asked to travel to Saskatoon on Monday.

Space Weather  from Spaceweather.com, SWPC.noaa.gov , http://relativisticballoons.blogspot.com/2016/08/space-weather-update.html,  and Kyoto (possibly others as well)

Swedish Institute of Space Physics: Kiruna Magnetometer:  http://www.irf.se/Observatory/?link=Magnetometers

quiet during the flight, but then saw two EMIC waves, one from 12 - 14 UT and another from 16 - 18 UT on Aug. 14th after the event had occurred. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Finnish Magnetometer Array: http://www.sgo.fi/Data/Pulsation/latestPulsation.php

It looks like there was an EMIC wave between 12 - 15 UT at all stations on Aug. 14th. Kilpisjarvi showed an increase in broad band ULF frequency ranges and then a EMIC wave which started at about 5:00UT. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Scandinavian Riometer data http://sgo.fi/Data/Riometer/latestRiometer.php

The data from the 14th looks like there was little precipitation until after 02:00 UT and then it died down after about 03:00UT at the higher latitude riometers. There was structure throughout the rest of the day at all sites as well.  

Lancaster Riometer http://spears.lancs.ac.uk/summary/riometer/kil_1/2016/08/ 

Again, riometers are not really my thing, but it looks like there were some bursty precipitation just after midnight. 

Kiara Riometer

 the KAIRA array has been running in full-sky imaging
riometry mode (38 MHz) throughout this time period and will continue to do
so for the remainder of the campaign.

As of tomorrow (Sat 13-Aug-2016), it will additionally be running a
high-speed multi-beam, multi-frequency riometry and various other
monitoring diagnostics. This will continue for a week at least.

NOAA GOES Electron Flux:

nominal levels, but looks to be on the rise. 

NOAA GOES Proton Flux:
nominal levels.

ACE Solar wind speed: 

Vsw =  306.4km/s

ACE Solar proton density:

density =  4.2 protons/cm^3

Sunspot number:
61  Sunspot regions 2574, 2575, and 2576 are Earthward facing but do not currently look complex enough to likely produce a CME. 

GOES Flare activity:

no flares during the Aug. 13-14 launch

6-hr max B2 

24 hr max C3 

Kp:
kp =  1 with a 24 hour max of kp = 2

ACE SW magnetic field:

Bz = 3.8 nT North

Btotal =  5.7 nT

Coronal hole news
The next coronal hole is expected to come after Aug. 18th maybe around the 20th. We should be able to get a 10 heads up from Stereo A. Stereo A will also give us an idea about the magnetic field orientation. 

Kyoto AE:

very quiet 

Kyoto Dst:

Very quiet. But right at the time of the precipitation event it looks like there may have been a small pressure pulse that hit the magnetosphere at that time. ACE realtime data was missing during most of the flight.

Swedish Phrase of a the Day: https://www.innovativelanguage.com/word-of-the-day/swedish 

Jag frågade illustratören att rita en bild åt mig. 

I asked the illustrator to draw me a picture. 

Hej då och god kväll från Kiruna (Good bye and good evening from Kiruna), 

Alexa and the BARREL team.

BARREL Daily update Aug. 14th 2016

Update Summary

From Robyn - I’m happy to report that BARREL Flight 4A was a success! The balloon and payload both performed well. The flight was terminated at 0540 UT because it was moving west towards lakes and mountains. It was a short flight, but longer than we expected. Most importantly, we caught the conjunction with RBSP-A that we were targeting, and we saw a precipitation event that lasted almost two hours.  A preliminary look suggests that this was bursty, most likely microburst precipitation. We’ll need to look at the data more carefully, but this looks very promising. The payload is now on the ground at 67.72N, 18.88E, and recovery prospects look good. 

I think the team will be resting for most of the day today. We expect the next launch attempt to be on Tuesday. I will send another update when we get a better look at the surface weather.

From Arlo- We have recovered the payload from flight 4A! There was some light damage to the box and handles, but the payload seems intact upon initial inspection. The recovery was smooth in an easy to reach, relatively dry area. 

News from Kiruna

Next possible launch date - Tuesday Aug 16th

Payloads up:

none

Payloads coming/which came down:

4A Launched: 22:24 UT Aug. 13th - 05:40 UT Aug. 14th 

News from Van Allen Probes:
Summary

EMFISIS has extra burst requests in for the periods near Van Allen conjunctions out through the 20th

News from MMS: 
MMS team needs to know within 24 hours if you would like them to download data. E-mail Drew Turner or Allison Jaynes if you would like them to collect data in a specific region/time for conjunction studies.

News from THEMIS: 

As an update, the THEMIS team have enabled fast survey captures at
the L-shell of BARREL and the neighboring inner magnetosphere (L> ~3)
for the context of possible conjunctions with this BARREL campaign.
Within these fast survey intervals, thye also trigger particle and wave
bursts to capture high-frequency waves (whistler-mode).

This special data collection scheme is implemented on the three inner
probes for Aug. 10-25 (starting from Aug. 11 for TH-D), based on your
estimated interval of this BARREL campaign.

News from Cluster:

No new news

News from Firebird:

We did reset the firebird spacecraft and are now taking data at a 50ms cadence continuously to cover BARREL so you can probably add that to your next update.

News from AeroCube 6:

No new news

News from EISCAT:

No new News 

News from ABOVE2:

Teams are still on standby. We will not travel to Saskatoon this weekend.

Space Weather  from Spaceweather.com, SWPC.noaa.gov , http://relativisticballoons.blogspot.com/2016/08/space-weather-update.html,  and Kyoto (possibly others as well)

Swedish Institute of Space Physics: Kiruna Magnetometer:  http://www.irf.se/Observatory/?link=Magnetometers

quiet during the flight. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Finnish Magnetometer Array: http://www.sgo.fi/Data/Pulsation/latestPulsation.php

Very quiet right before the event, but an EMIC wave around 9 - 10 UT. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Scandinavian Riometer data http://sgo.fi/Data/Riometer/latestRiometer.php

The data from the morning of the 14th is not up yet, but there is some structure in the data at the very end of Aug. 13th.  

Lancaster Riometer http://spears.lancs.ac.uk/summary/riometer/kil_1/2016/08/ 

Again, riometers are not really my thing, but it looks like there were some bursty precipitation just after midnight. 

Kiara Riometer

 the KAIRA array has been running in full-sky imaging
riometry mode (38 MHz) throughout this time period and will continue to do
so for the remainder of the campaign.

As of tomorrow (Sat 13-Aug-2016), it will additionally be running a
high-speed multi-beam, multi-frequency riometry and various other
monitoring diagnostics. This will continue for a week at least.

NOAA GOES Electron Flux:

nominal levels.

NOAA GOES Proton Flux:
nominal levels.

ACE Solar wind speed: 

Vsw =  419.4km/s

ACE Solar proton density:

density =  4.2 protons/cm^3

Sunspot number:
73  Sunspot regions 2574, 2575, and 2576 are Earthward facing but do not currently look complex enough to likely produce a CME. 

GOES Flare activity:

6-hr max B1 

24 hr max B2

Kp:
kp =  1 with a 24 hour max of kp = 2

ACE SW magnetic field:

Bz = 3.0 nT North

Btotal =  4.3 nT

Coronal hole news
The next coronal hole is expected to come after Aug. 18th maybe around the 20th. We should be able to get a 10 heads up from Stereo A. Stereo A will also give us an idea about the magnetic field orientation. 

Kyoto AE:

very quiet 

Kyoto Dst:

Very quiet. But right at the time of the precipitation event it looks like there may have been a small pressure pulse that hit the magnetosphere at that time. ACE realtime data was missing during most of the flight.

Swedish Phrase of a the Day: https://www.innovativelanguage.com/word-of-the-day/swedish 

Pojken äter en varmkorv.

The boy is eating a hot dog.  

Hej då och god kväll från Kiruna (Good bye and good evening from Kiruna), 

Alexa and the BARREL team.

BARREL Daily Update Aug. 11th 2016

Update Summary

KML files for MMS1 are up on the google earth dropbox folder. Hopefully later today we'll have THEMIS and LOMONSOV up as well. 

Currently it is looking less likely to have a large CME from the current active regions, but things can always change. 

News from Kiruna

Next possible launch date - Saturday evening of Aug. 13th for the early Sunday morning conjunction on Aug. 14th

Payloads up:

none
Payloads coming/which came down:

none

News from MMS: 
MMS team needs to know within 24 hours if you would like them to download data. E-mail Drew Turner or Allison Jaynes if you would like them to collect data in a specific region/time for conjunction studies.

News from THEMIS: 

As an update, the THEMIS team have enabled fast survey captures at
the L-shell of BARREL and the neighboring inner magnetosphere (L> ~3)
for the context of possible conjunctions with this BARREL campaign.
Within these fast survey intervals, thye also trigger particle and wave
bursts to capture high-frequency waves (whistler-mode).

This special data collection scheme is implemented on the three inner
probes for Aug. 10-25 (starting from Aug. 11 for TH-D), based on your
estimated interval of this BARREL campaign.

Space Weather  from Spaceweather.com, SWPC.noaa.gov , http://relativisticballoons.blogspot.com/2016/08/space-weather-update.html,  and Kyoto (possibly others as well)

Swedish Institute of Space Physics: Kiruna Magnetometer:  http://www.irf.se/Observatory/?link=Magnetometers

quiet but it looks like this past evening there was a substorm. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Finnish Magnetometer Array: http://www.sgo.fi/Data/Pulsation/latestPulsation.php

Some broad band activity on  Aug. 10th. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Scandinavian Riometer data http://sgo.fi/Data/Riometer/latestRiometer.php

Just a reminder Riometers are not my area of expertise, but it does look like there may have been precipitation from around Aug. 10th around noon and during the period of the potential substorm. 

NOAA GOES Electron Flux:

We can see the end of the activity from yesterday's event and currently the levels look nominal. 

NOAA GOES Proton Flux:
nominal levels.

ACE Solar wind speed: 

Vsw =  566.4 km/s

ACE Solar proton density:

density =  0.7 protons/cm^3

Sunspot number:
69  and Sunspot AR2571 is rotating off the disk. Sunspot regions 2574, 2575, and 2576 are still rotating around but do not currently look complex enough to likely produce a CME. 

GOES Flare activity:

6-hr max B5 

24 hr max B5

Kp:
kp =   2 with a 24 hour max of kp = 3

ACE SW magnetic field:

Bz = 1.9 nT South

Btotal =  5.0 nT

Coronal hole news
The high speed stream has reached the Earth and the solar wind velocity is expected to stay high until about August 12th according to the WSA-ENLIL models. However we can already see that the velocity is dropping. 

Kyoto AE:

Although the Kiruna magnetometer looked like there was a large period of activity, the realtime AE from Kyoto is very quiet.  

Kyoto Dst:

Very quiet. 

Swedish Phrase of a the Day: https://www.innovativelanguage.com/word-of-the-day/swedish 

De vanligaste paprikorna är gröna, röda och gula. 

The most common bell peppers are green, red, or yellow. 

Hej då och god kväll från Kiruna (Good bye and good evening from Kiruna), 

Alexa and the BARREL team.

BARREL Status Report #7 August 10, 2016

BARREL Status Report #7

August 10, 2016

Today we completed a launch dry run with Esrange personnel. We went through every step as if it was a real launch, except for actually connecting the squibs and taking a balloon out. Overall, it went smoothly. It was really good to work through each step and have a chance to check our procedures and coordination. 

We are still looking at a possible launch on Saturday evening. The upper level winds are starting to look better for the weekend. The surface weather doesn’t look great at this point but there is plenty of time for that to change. We’ll have our next weather briefing on Friday when we will make a final decision on showing Saturday. My next status report will be Friday since I don’t anticipate much news for tomorrow.

BARREL update Aug. 10th 2016

Update Summary

Not much news. The high speed stream (HSS) has had an oscillating Bz magnetic field component which means that there hasn't been a geomagnetic storm as defined by Dst associated with it. (The more southward Bz the more solar wind energy can enter the magnetosphere and ultimately produce a geomagnetic storm) There have been some strong(ish) substorm activity throughout the last 24 hours. Substorm processes produce aurora at higher latitudinal regions. The HSS appears to be starting it's decline and should completely pass us by the morning of Aug. 12. 

There are three large numbered sunspots which have now rotated onto the Earthward side of the solar disk. They are all beta or alpha class (not very complex) and so currently are unlikely to produce a coronal mass ejection (CME), but they are growing in complexity and not yet Earth-Directed. 

News from Kiruna

Next possible launch date - Evening of Aug. 13th for the early morning conjunction on Aug. 14th

News from Van Allen Probes:
Summary

The lapping event, where the spacecraft are very close together is happening I think today. 

News from MMS: 
MMS team needs to know within 24 hours if you would like them to download data. E-mail Drew Turner or Allison Jaynes if you would like them to collect data in a specific region/time for conjunction studies.

News from THEMIS: 

As an update, the THEMIS team have enabled fast survey captures at
the L-shell of BARREL and the neighboring inner magnetosphere (L> ~3)
for the context of possible conjunctions with this BARREL campaign.
Within these fast survey intervals, thye also trigger particle and wave
bursts to capture high-frequency waves (whistler-mode).

This special data collection scheme is implemented on the three inner
probes for Aug. 10-25 (starting from Aug. 11 for TH-D), based on your
estimated interval of this BARREL campaign.

Space Weather  from Spaceweather.com, SWPC.noaa.gov , http://relativisticballoons.blogspot.com/2016/08/space-weather-update.html,  and Kyoto (possibly others as well)

Swedish Institute of Space Physics: Kiruna Magnetometer:  http://www.irf.se/Observatory/?link=Magnetometers

quiet but it looks like this past evening there was a substorm. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Finnish Magnetometer Array: http://www.sgo.fi/Data/Pulsation/latestPulsation.php

EMIC waves observed around noon at Kilpisjarvi and IVALO on Aug. 9th. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Scandinavian Riometer data http://sgo.fi/Data/Riometer/latestRiometer.php

Just a reminder Riometers are not my area of expertise, but it does look like there may have been precipitation from around Aug. 9th on and off starting at 0300UT and continuing  throughout the afternoon into the midnight hours. 

NOAA GOES Electron Flux:
Some significant activity with today's substorms and a bit before hand as well. 

NOAA GOES Proton Flux:
nominal levels.

ACE Solar wind speed: 

Vsw =  620.5 km/s

ACE Solar proton density:

density =  1.5 protons/cm^3

Sunspot number:
72 and Sunspot AR2571 has a beta-gamma complexity which means that there is at a slightly higher chance for an M-class solar flare. Currently it looks like if we were so lucky for it to produce a CME, it may be Earth directed. There are a few more larger sunspot regions (2574, 2575, and 2576) which are now starting to appear on the disk and may produce Earth directed CMEs in a few days giving a potential arrival time of about 1 week from now. This is all speculative at the moment but stay tuned! 

Flare activity:

6-hr max B4 

24 hr max B5

Kp:
kp =   4 with a 24 hour max of kp = 4

SW magnetic field:

Bz = 0.4 nT South

Btotal =  4.1 nT

Coronal hole news
The high speed stream has reached the Earth and the solar wind velocity is expected to stay high until about August 12th according to the WSA-ENLIL models. Bz has been fluctuating and so no geomagnetic storm has been produced, but there has been some nice substorm activity.

AE:

Possible substorms around 8:45 and 10:00 UT today. It does seems to have been slightly elevated throughout the morning hours though. 

Dst:

Very quiet. 

Swedish Phrase of a the Day: https://www.innovativelanguage.com/word-of-the-day/swedish 

Grönsaker är en mineral-och vitaminrik källa

Vegetables are a rich source of vitamins and minerals. 

Hej då och god kväll från Kiruna (Good bye and good evening from Kiruna), 

Alexa and the BARREL team.