Our mission was to study the loss of radiation belt electrons to the atmosphere. Translated to the ten 100 most commonly used words (It's just a fun website and this is an excuse to try to use it :) )We studied the waring away of tiny matter to the air high above the 3rd rock from the sun.... okay I think that might actually be more confusing and much less of an accurate statement. Let's try this again. There is a lot of radiation up in space and we care because it can affect our technology, environment, and our health. One of the largest regions of this radiation are the radiation belts (we're not that creative with names), otherwise known as the Van Allen Belts after the guy who discovered them.
The radiation belts respond inconsistently to geomagnetic activity and can vary by orders of magnetituds!
In the summary paper we discuss how the measurements where made, what type of events we were able to study, and how to use our X-ray data to find the population of electrons that created them (which is not a unique solution, thus where observations from the Van Allen Probes can really help).
This is hopefully just the start of all the exciting research that will come out of BARREL and future balloon campaigns! This August we'll be launching balloons again, but this time from Kurina Sweden. We'll still have conjunctions with the Van Allen Probes and other satellite missions. However this time we'll also be conjugate to a whole new set of ground array observatories who we'll be collaborating with! But that's a whole other post...