August 5th BARREL Daily e-mail

Hej och god morgon (Hi and good morning), 

Update Summary

MAKE SURE TO SUBMIT YOUR AGU ABSTRACT!!!! Deadline is midnight east coast time. 

Things are moving along here. We hope to have our flight readiness review tomorrow. If the Weather forecast improves we may push for an August 7th launch as there is a great conjunction between Van Allen Probes, MMS, and Kiruna.  The last we heard we may be able to have a 16 hour launch so if we launch in the morning the balloon should still be up for this conjunction. We'll keep you posted on this progress. 

Speaking of conjunctions, there are now KML files for both Van Allen Probes, all four MMS Satellites, and Firebird. THEMIS and Cluster are next on the list as well as the lines of constant L for the Northern Hemisphere. I was hoping to have a full list of possible conjunctions from Aug. 7th to the 11th by the time I sent this e-mail, but that didn't happen. I'll try to get it done by the end of today. 

News from Kiruna
Ground Weather:

Temp.:  15.1 C
Wind speed:  2.9 m/s with a max of 6.1  m/s within the last five minutes or so. 

Precipitation (rain):  0.0 mm But it was dizzying a bit. 

It looks like there may be a bit of rain over the next few days. You can see the forecast here http://www.wunderground.com/q/zmw:00000.1.02043?sp=ESNQ Currently it looks like the next clear day may be Sunday or Monday. However there is a chance of a thunderstorm on Tues.

Stratospheric weather:
At tomorrow's briefing we should be able to talk with the meteorologist and  start getting Stratospheric wind updates with rough predictions of the flight paths soon.

Payloads up: First possible launch date August 7th
N/A

Payloads coming down:N/A

News from EFW:
Summary

**For the last campaign we started out collecting at 16K and switched to 4K on 1/9/2014, presumably b/c we got completely blocked up with good data to telemeter. Spent majority of rest of mission playing it back. "Fortunately", the activity died off after the 12th or so, so this wasn't an issue. Another way to look at this is that the later inactivity saved our butts!

**I'm leaning towards 4K collection. We can still get some chorus this way and we can collect for about 4 days before filling up the buffer. 

The only real advantage of 16K is to use timing differences b/t two antennas to determine propagation velocity of time domain structures, like the ones Forrest discusses. But, these could be important to microburst precip. I've attached a plot from Malaspina's 2014 paper showing the MLT distribution of time domain structures from his RBSP survey. 

**We have sc contacts tomorrow, so we can upload collection requests for the 7th.  I think if you guys have any chance of launching that balloon on the 7th you should go for it! With the recurring high speed stream scheduled to hit, the early days may be our best chance at catching activity!

-Aaron

News from Firebird:

Summary
From Alex Crew yesterday: Flight unit 4 is completely full from our campaign 4, Flight unit 3 is 97% full (should fill up later today). We are finishing downlinking some of our hi-res and catching up on our context data, but should be able to meet an August 7th turn around launch.

Space Weather  from Spaceweather.com, SWPC.noaa.gov , and Kyoto (possibly others as well)

Kiruna Magnetometer:  http://www.irf.se/Observatory/?link=Magnetometers
There appear to be no ULF waves, but there did appear to be a substorm last night right before 11:00 UT., Just around the time we brought the aurora imager in. We have to analyze the data to see if we happen to catch any of the auroral that may have been overhead.

GOES Electron Flux:
GOES 2MeV electrons remain slightly elevated.

GOES Proton Flux:
GOES proton fluxes are remaining nominal.

Solar wind speed: 

Vsw = 386.6 km/s

Solar proton density:

density = 4.8 protons/cm^3

Sun spot number:
68

Flare activity:
There are very small chances (<10 48="" a="" br="" class="" flare="" hours.="" in="" m="" nbsp="" next="" of="" or="" the="" x="">
Kp:
kp =  2 with a 24 hour max of kp = 3

SW magnetic field:

Bz = 1.2 nT north

Btotal =  4.4 nT 

Coronal hole news
There are no large coronal holes currently on the Earthward facing side of the Sun. 

AE:

AE is currently very quiet. 

Dst:

The  current Dst is very quiet

Swedish Phrase of the day:

From the Guy at the lunch counter 

Hōgt -Flygande Planer - Plans that fly high

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

Alexa and the BARREL team. 

August 4th 2015 BARREL daily update

Hej och god morgon (Hi and good morning), 

Update Summary

Things are moving along here under the dome here at ESRANGE. We have three payloads set up.  There is another balloon mission launch tomorrow morning, but we're  on track for a launch dress rehearsal Thursday morning and our flight readiness review with NASA on Friday.

There are now daily google Earth KML files for both RBSP and MMS in drop box. KML files for Firebird and THEMIS will hopefully follow soon. 

NOAA is predicting an increase in geomagnetic activity late in the day on August 6th due to a recurrent positive polarity high speed stream.

News from Kiruna
Ground Weather:

http://www.irf.se/weather/
Temp.: 15.0 C
Wind speed: 1.6 m/s E with a max of 3.5 m/s E within the last five minutes or so. 

Precipitation (rain): 0.0 mm

Stratospheric weather:
At today's briefing we talked with the meteorologist and we'll soon start getting Stratospheric wind updates with rough predictions of the flight paths.

Payloads up: First possible launch date August 7th
N/A

Payloads coming down:N/A

News from EFW:
Summary
No news is good news

News from Firebird:

Summary
From Alex Crew: Flight unit 4 is completely full from our campaign 4, Flight unit 3 is 97% full (should fill up later today). We are finishing downlinking some of our hi-res and catching up on our context data, but should be able to meet an August 7th turn around launch.

Space Weather  from Spaceweather.com, SWPC.noaa.gov , and Kyoto (possibly others as well)

Kiruna Magnetometer:  http://www.irf.se/Observatory/?link=Magnetometers
Looks like there was a nice ULF wave, but it's below a Hz so hard to say exactly what frequency on the given Y-scale.

GOES Electron Flux:
GOES 2MeV electrons remain elevated.

GOES Proton Flux:
GOES proton fluxes are remaining nominal.

Solar wind speed: 

Vsw = 434.7 km/s

Solar proton density:

density = 4.1 protons/cm^3

Sun spot number:
62

Flare activity:
There are very small chances (<10 48="" a="" br="" class="" flare="" hours.="" in="" m="" nbsp="" next="" of="" or="" the="" x="">
Kp:
kp =  1with a 24 hour max of kp = 2

SW magnetic field:

Bz = 1.9 nT north

Btotal =  4.7 nT 

Coronal hole news
There are no large coronal holes currently on the Earthward facing side of the Sun. 

AE:

AE is currently very quiet. 

Dst:

The  current Dst is very quiet

Daily BARREL check in information: First Telecon on August 5th 2015, tomorrow. 

Swedish Phrase of the day:

My hovercraft is full of eels -> Min svävare är full med ål

Why this phrase you ask? I forgot to ask a local for a good phrase for the day and googled Swedish phrases and this is what came up. See here

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

Alexa and the BARREL team. 

August 3rd 2015 BARREL Daily Update

Hej, 

Status:
The first round of the BARREL crew have made it to ESRANGE and are currently bench-testing Payload 1G. A preliminary compatibility test with ESRANGE equipment (transponders, secondary terminate) is scheduled for tomorrow morning.

Daily Telecom Schedule:

Diner is scheduled here for 6:00 local time and lasts only an hour, so we would like to schedule the daily telecoms one hour later than originally planned. This would mean that the new time and date for our first telecom is  August 5th at 7pm Kiruna time (13:00 Dartmouth time, 12:00 Minneapolis/Iowa time, 11:00 University of Colorado Boulder, 10:00 Berkley time). 

Call in info:

Time: 7pm Kiruna time (13:00 Dartmouth time, 12:00 Minneapolis/Iowa time, 11:00 University of Colorado Boulder, 10:00 Berkley time). 

Phone number +1 641-715-3580

Access code 481960

Launch Plan:

Google Earth KML files have been made for the predicted trajectory files. All the KML files for the Sweden Kiruna campaign are in the Dropbox folder labeled "Kiruna". Currently they are very large files (~two week periods for the RBSP files and the whole month for the MMS files). This will be fixed, i.e. changed to daily files, very shortly and the FIREBIRD files for the campaign will be added once I run them.

We are still looking at an earliest possible launch date of August 7th. The upper level winds look like they may set up early this year so we may get to launch close to that date. After we become flight-ready, we'll have daily weather briefings at 2:00 pm Kiruna time to decide if we will try to launch the following morning. Those updates will be included here as well. 

Ground Weather 
High of 16 deg low of 8 deg (C, when in Rome). Partly cloudy with a low chance of rain. Ground winds of up to 10 km/hr. 

Stratospheric WeatherIt looks like the winds may set up early but we'll keep you informed as we get closer to mission ready.

Space Weather:

The Sun is currently pretty quiet, but there was just a large CME ejected on the far side. Fingers crossed this region stays active and is a sign of lots of space weather heading our way. Another hopeful sign is that the radiation belts appear to quiet well filled as you can see in the attached image. 

Kiruna Magnetometer
Quiet.

GOES electron flux
There is currently an electron flux event alert according to GOES 15. GOES 13 is currently seeing lower levels of electrons. However, both are rising.

GOES Proton Flux
Very quiet.

Space Weather from Spaceweather.com and SWPC.noaa.gov 
Solar wind speed: 482.9 km/s

Solar Proton density: 1.7 protons/cm^3

Sun Spot number: 51 (and a few bigger numbered spots) 

Kp  is quiet

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

Bz = 0.6 nT North

Btotal = 4.2 nT

Coronal holes: There are no large coronal holes on the solar surface at the moment. ENIL is suggesting that there may be relatively low and narrow high speed stream that may hit the Earth on August 8th. 

From Kyoto 
AE: There may be a substorm currently going on. 

Dst: It is very quiet with minimums around -20 nT. 

Swedish phrase of the day : Coffee break = fikarast An important word for the jet legged and for any physicist in general. One might be able to get away with just Kaffe behaga = Coffee please. 

Hej då

Alexa and the BARREL team. 

On the way to Sweden.

Robyn and a portion of the crew should be up at ESRANGE and enjoying the midnight sun... Well by enjoying I mean unpacking and setting up our lab space. I'm meeting up with George from the HiT&MIS team in Nework and then off to Stokholm and finally on to Kiruna and ESRANGE. 

I believe a few days behind us will be Gar and the undergrad crew who will be flying some of their instruments on our balloons. Some Canadian friends will also be coming up to gain some experience for their upcoming campaigns. 

Throughout the campaign we'll have different BARREL personal coming through. It's a bit easier to Sweden than it is to get to Antarctica. We might not get to see photos of penguins this year, but I'm sure we'll find some other nice photos to share. 

And with that our plane is about to go...

Happy flying

BARREL Daily E-mail update

Hej, (Swedish for Hi)

This post is from the test e-mail making sure that everyone who needs to be on the daily e-mail list is on the daily e-mail list. If you did not receive an e-mail and should have, please let me know. As with the last two campaigns a shortened version of these e-mails will be posted on this blog.  

Summary of the EFW/EMFISIS team meeting disscusions:

Yesterday we had a discussion in the EFW/EMFISIS team meetings about how the daily e-mails and telecoms will work for the Kiruna mission. There wasn't too much discussion about changes to how the burst coordination was previously run. Below are short summaries of the important bits.

Daily e-mails

I'll start the daily e-mails next week after I arrive in Sweden (sometime on or after August 3rd). Our first absolute possible  launch date is August 7th, but this will of course depend on the stratospheric winds as well as the ground weather. The daily e-mails (as well as posts on this blog) will try to keep everyone up to date on how this date may change. 

Daily Telecons

As these aren't necessary right away, we'll try to push them off as much as possible. We'll have our first tag up on August 5th at 6pm Kiruna time (12:00 Dartmouth time, 11:00 am Minneapolis/Iowa time, 10:00 am University of Colorado Boulder, 9:00 am Berkley time). This telecom will consist of updating the current launch likelihood for August 7th, an update on the BARREL campaign set up, and any other discussions that may be needed prior to the first possible launch. At this time we'll again decide when the next telecom is, e.g. do we need to start them up right away or decide on when we'll have the next check in. Also make sure to check the daily e-mails for updates on this.  

Missions specific information (Van Allen Probes, MMS, BIERS, FIREBIRD, HiT&MIS and others)

If you would like to have information added to the daily e-mails I'm happy to oblige. In the past I have try to include information from real (or near real time) observatories such as magnetometers, GOES, and SW data. We of course also include information on the burst times that we have identified as interesting and are telemetering down from the Van Allen Probes and include that in the daily e-mails as well. If you would like to have other information included please send me an update at least two hours prior to the daily tag up time. If I get the update after I've sent out the daily e-mail, the update will be included in the next day's e-mail.

If I've forgotten anything please let me know. If I've forgotten to add anyone on the list, or you would like to be removed, please let me know as well. 

Hej då (Swedish for goodbye)

Burst Collaboration Discussions

To those who are at the Van Allen Probes science working group meeting - We'll be discussing the burst coordination for this upcoming campaign (the first batch of people are leaving this Friday!) during the EFW/EMFISIS joint team meetings. For those not at the meeting, I'll put an update here.

Most important things:

1) The predicted files will once again be up on dropbox
2) We'll once again be having the daily e-mails, so if you would like to be on the e-mail list please let us know. We'll also be putting those e-mails up on here as was done during the last two campaigns.
3) We'll again be having the daily call in, but not sure yet when those will start
4) an overview of the other missions (besides Van Allen) that will be coordinating with BARREL for this campaign.

Talk to you all soon, and as a teaser, here's the first possible conjunctions we could potentially have at Kiruna. Should be really exciting!

Some light summer reading from the BARREL team.

Looking for something to read for this summer? Well we have something for you. Within the last month we've had two new BARREL papers published.

Lauren Blum et al published another GRL on the January 18 & 19 2013 relativistic electron events. It's a great new look at EMIC waves and when they may be responsible for relativistic electron precipitation.

The second paper is one that we've been working on for a long time. It's on two event time periods, one on the 3rd and the other on the 6th of January 2014. For each event we had some fantastic conjunctions between the array of BARREL balloons and the two Van Allen Probes. We were able to show that the plasmapsheric hiss, and then the precipitation where the hiss was resonant with radiation belt particles, was coherent across large regions of the plasmasphere.

Okay so perhaps this isn't really the light summer reading that you were hoping for, but we hope you enjoy them any way!

The Nature journal where our paper is published.