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Post Info TOPIC: BARREL


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NASA's BARREL Returns Successful from Antarctica

Three months, 20 balloons, and one very successful campaign: The team for NASA's BARREL - short for Balloon Array for Radiation belt Relativistic Electron Losses -- mission returned from Antarctica in March 2014. In a new NASA Flickr gallery, the team shared their images from weeks of work in the constant sun of the South Pole summer.
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NASA's BARREL Mission Launches 20 Balloons

In Antarctica in January, 2013 - the summer at the South Pole - scientists released 20 balloons, each eight stories tall, into the air to help answer an enduring space weather question: when the giant radiation belts surrounding Earth lose material, where do the extra particles actually go?
The NASA-funded mission is called BARREL for Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses and is led by physicist Robyn Millan of Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. During this month of bright, sunny days, the BARREL team launched a balloon every day or two into the circumpolar winds that circulate around the pole.

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Balloon Array for RBSP Relativistic Electron Losses

BARREL (Balloon Array for RBSP Relativistic Electron Losses) is a multiple-balloon investigation that will study Earth's Radiation Belts. Atmospheric losses of relativistic electrons play an important role in radiation belt dynamics; precipitation into the atmosphere may even completely deplete the radiation belts in some cases. BARREL is the first NASA Living with a Star Geospace Mission of Opportunity, and will support NASA's RBSP (Radiation Belt Storm Probes) mission.
BARREL will consist of two Antarctic balloon campaigns conducted in Austral summers of 2012 and 2013. During each campaign, a total of 20 small (~20 kg) balloon payloads will be launched to an altitude of 30-35 km to maintain an array of 5-8 payloads. Each balloon will carry a NaI scintillator to measure the bremsstrahlung X-rays produced by precipitating relativistic electrons as they collide with neutrals in Earth's atmosphere, and a DC magnetometer. The balloons will be launched from the South African Antarctic Station (SANAE IV) and the British station, Halley Bay.

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Launching Balloons in Antarctica

They nicknamed it the "Little Balloon That Could." Launched in December of 2010 from McMurdo Station in Antarctica, the research balloon was a test run and it bobbed lower every day like it had some kind of leak. But every day for five days it rose back up in the sky to some 112,000 feet in the air.
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A new NASA project will use more than 40 high altitude  balloons to return new scientific insights about Earth's Van Allen  Belts. The type of radiation in the belts can be hazardous to  astronauts, orbiting satellites and aircraft flying in high altitude  polar routes.  
The new mission is called the Balloon Array for Radiation-belt  Relativistic Electron Losses, or BARREL, and its principal  investigator is Robyn Millan of Dartmouth. BARREL will fly in 2013  and 2014, and will provide answers to how and where the Van Allen  Belts periodically drain into Earth's upper atmosphere. BARREL will fly in conjunction with NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes satellites, due to launch in 2011.

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A new NASA project will use more than 40 high altitude balloons to return new scientific insights about Earth's Van Allen Belts. The type of radiation in the belts can be hazardous to astronauts, orbiting satellites and aircraft flying in high altitude polar routes.
NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, has awarded $9.3 million to Dartmouth College of Hanover, N.H., for the study. Research using the balloons can be carried out at a fraction of the cost of using an orbiting satellite.
The new mission is called the Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses, or BARREL. The mission's principal investigator is Robyn Millan of Dartmouth. BARREL will fly in 2013 and 2014, and will provide answers to how and where the Van Allen Belts, discovered in 1958, periodically drain into Earth's upper atmosphere. BARREL will fly in conjunction with NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes satellites, due to launch in 2011.

"The study of near-Earth radiation is very important. This research will provide information to mitigate problems here on our planet as well as permit better design and operations of new technology in space and safer passage for space explorers" - John Mather, Nobel Prize recipient and chief scientist of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

The Van Allen Belts are a ring of energetic charged particles that encircle Earth and are constrained by Earth's magnetic field. Outbursts from the sun can pump additional energy and particles into the radiation belts, allowing them to drain again in a matter of days or weeks.
The balloons will be launched from Antarctica. They will expand to roughly the size of a large blimp when they reach the near-space research altitude. A single balloon of this type will hover at an altitude of approximately 21 miles for as long as two weeks. By carefully timing the launch of a series of balloons, about one per day, Millan and her group of young scientists in training can form a ring of balloons encircling the South Pole to study the total influx of radiation from the belts into Earth's atmosphere.

"This experiment will be the first of its kind in establishing a web of balloon-borne sensors working hand-in-hand with a satellite mission. In addition to the groundbreaking science that BARREL will provide, this kind of use of NASA's suborbital program is vital for training the next generation of scientists in a wide range of areas" - Dick Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, Washington.

The Radiation Belt Storm Probes satellites are part of NASA's Living with a Star Program that is designed to understand how and why the sun varies, how planetary systems respond and how human activities are affected. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, Greenbelt, Md., manages the program for the Science Mission Directorate.

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