Magnetometer Laboratory

Mag Lab
Position navigation intelligence

We are working with PNI RM3100 magneto-inductive magnetometers to develop ground and space-based magnetometer sensors. We are packaging and testing these chip-based sensors to perform in extreme environments on Earth and in Space. We are developing new magnetometer system architectures to enable noise identification in order to simplify ground-based and space-based magnetometry.


New System Architecture

Multi-magnetometers enable characterizing the spacecraft noise
Multi-magnetometers enable characterizing the spacecraft noise

By utilizing extremely low power (5 mW), low mass (5 g) and small size (2.5 x 2.5 x 2 cm) sensors, we can place multiple sensors on the ground or on the spacecraft to be able to sense the natural geomagnetic field and identify any noise sources from the surroundings or satellite. Using a variety of noise identification algorithms, we can remove the noise decreasing the susceptibility to environmental noise (such as cars) around ground sensors and from spacecraft sub-systems. This enables lower fidelity magnetic cleanliness and sub-system magnetic characterization efforts.

The NEMISIS concept uses three magnetometers – a high-quality fluxgate magnetometer on the end of a short boom and two body mounted PNI RM3100 magnetometers. The data from the three sensors can then be used to “clean” the data from spacecraft noise.

Smart algorithm’s like unsupervised blind source separation can separate out the space noise from the mixed signal that contains the geophysical signal of interest with a short boom or no boom.

Three magnetometers on the spacecraft bus sense all the noise and the geophysical magnetic field of interest
Three magnetometers on the spacecraft bus sense all the noise and the geophysical magnetic field of interest and UBSS can separate out the noise from the ambient signal as well as or better than traditional gradiometry on short or no booms.

Projects

New magnetometers are rad hard and very low-resource enabling a wide use of applications.
New magnetometers are rad hard and very low-resource enabling a wide use of applications.

NASA Artemis Lunar Gateway HERMES/NEMISIS

NASA-SwRI-UM ICOVEX CubeSat MIM

NASA GDC/NEMISIS

NASA ICEE2 Europa Lander Magnetometer

NSF iMAGS Space Weather Sensor

NASA LWS Geomagnetic Induced Current FST

NASA HTIDEs and STMD SSTP Efforts

ONR SENSORS