Constellation Ready Magnetometer – A nanosatellite fluxgate gradiometer payload with spacecraft noise mitigation
Abstract
Space plasma mission design is beginning to shift from missions of a few heavily instrumented spacecraft towards constellations of many lower cost spacecraft. The magnetosphere is vast, complex, dynamic, and has many feedback mechanisms so it must be characterized simultaneously on many scales to establish causality and fully discriminate between spatial and temporal effects. Such multi-point measurements require low-resource instruments that can make high fidelity measurements despite local magnetic noise sources, so that they are not restricted to bespoke spacecraft with severe electromagnetic cleanliness requirements. We present early work on the Constellation Ready Magnetometer – a nanosat scale low-noise fluxgate magnetometer payload with integrated spacecraft noise suppression. The Constellation Ready Magnetometer will use two nanosatellite scale sensors on a common boom that both experience the target geophysical magnetic field but act as a gradiometer for contaminating magnetic noise from the spacecraft. Two sensors are accommodated on a 60 cm non-magnetic magnetometer boom which was recently deployment tested in microgravity conditions. We apply recent advances in the origin of fluxgate noise and sensor design from the TRACERS SMEX mission to create a new miniature sensor. Finally, we apply signal processing and machine learning algorithms developed to mitigate platform magnetic noise from the Swarm-Echo mission to representative laboratory data simulating a variety of magnetic noise phenomena. Once complete, the Constellation Ready Magnetometer should provide robust magnetic field measurements from low-cost nanosatellite platforms even in the presence of non-trivial magnetic contamination.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2022
- Bibcode:
- 2022AGUFMSH35A..03M