Summary of the BARREL 2013 Campaign and Early Results from the 2014 Campaign

Abstract

BARREL is a multiple- balloon investigation designed to study electron losses from the Earth\u27s Radiation Belts. This mission allows for collaborative studies with many satellite missions including the Van Allen Probes, Cluster, Themis, and GOES. The second of the two BARREL campaigns will be completed January - February 2014 with a total of 20 stratospheric balloons launched from two Antarctic research stations. This creates an array of 5 - 8 slowly drifting payloads in the region that magnetically maps to the radiation belts and often to the CARISMA array in the Northern hemisphere. BARREL provides the first balloon measurements of relativistic electron precipitation while comprehensive in situ measurements of both plasma waves and energetic particle populations are observed by the Van Allen probes and other satellites. We will present a first look at the 2014 campaign as well as summarize the results from the 2013 campaign. Specifically we will look at 26 January 2013 where precipitation due to substorm dynamics is observed. During the geomagnetic storm which started on 26 January 2013, a substorm onset was observed above Alaska at ~8:30 UT. Shortly after the substorm onset, payload 1H in the BARREL array observes precipitation in the same energy range as the injection observed by GOES. Oscillations on different time scales can also be observed at other energies on payload 1H and appear to be related to wave activity observed by Van Allen Probe A. Van Allen Probe A is initially located within 4 hours of MLT and 3 L-values East of the balloon as it comes out of perigee. As the satellite moves into it\u27s apogee it comes within 1 hour of MLT and 0.5 L of payload 1H. With this relatively close conjunction during the substorm combined with GOES and ground based data from the carisma array, the substorm dynamics, wave-particle interactions, and the resultant precipitation can be carefully studied