The cesium-vapor scalar and fluxgate vector magnetometers aboard the Magsat spacecraft, which has a twilight, sun-synchronous orbit with a 96.76-deg inclination, have together measured the earth's magnetic field magnitude to accuracies better than 2 nT, and the magnitude of each field component to better than 6 nT. The magnetometers are located at the end of a boom to isolate them from the effects of spacecraft fields, and an optical system was used to measure the attitude of the vector magnetometer and sun sensor at the boom relative to the two star cameras of the main spacecraft structure. The data gathered is available from the National Space Science Data Center in several formats and is currently undergoing analysis. Scalar and vector error budget values are given for the spacecraft's five error sources, which include the instrument, position and time errors, digitization noise, attitude errors, and spacecraft fields.


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    Title :

    The Magsat mission


    Contributors:
    Langel, R. (author) / Ousley, G. (author) / Berbert, J. (author) / Murphy, J. (author) / Settle, M. (author)


    Publication date :

    1982-04-01


    Type of media :

    Miscellaneous


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English


    Keywords :


    The Magsat magnetometer boom

    Smola, J. F. / Radford, W. E. / Reitz, M. H. | NTRS | 1980



    Attitude transfer assembly design for MAGSAT

    Collyer, P. W. / Freund, N. P. | NTRS | 1976


    MAGSAT attitude control system design and performance

    TOSSMAN, B. / MOBLEY, F. / FOUNTAIN, G. et al. | AIAA | 1980


    High precision attitude determination for Magsat

    Abshire, G. / Mccutcheon, R. / Summers, G. et al. | NTRS | 1981