Enabling low-cost, high accuracy magnetic field measurements on Small Sats for space weather missions

Magnetic field measurements play an important role in space weather and engineering applications of Earth-orbiting satellites, such as attitude determination, momentum management, and scientific instrument pointing. Unless built specifically for high accuracy magnetic measurements (an expensive process), satellites usually come with significant magnetic sources of errors that severely degrade the accuracy with which the Earth’s field can be measured. This study presents innovative algorithms that enable high quality magnetic field measurements on smaller spacecraft without booms and using “standard” buses. We present results obtained on laboratory and space data from low-cost magnetometers on the Radio Aurora Explorer CubeSat launched in November 2010 to demonstrate how these algorithms can tremendously improve measurement accuracy on a spacecraft that includes instrumentation with significant variable magnetic signatures. The algorithms rely on both ground-based calibration procedures and on-orbit compensation using multiple magnetometers. When used with high accuracy magnetometers such as fluxgate space sensors, it will enable high accuracy magnetometry with nano-Tesla resolution in low-Earth orbit.