Induced magnetic field due to reaction wheel shielding

You are here: Homepage > Search

Induced magnetic field due to reaction wheel shielding

Pudney, M. A. / Kapfunde, G. / Trougnou, L.

In situ magnetic field measurements are of critical importance to unanswered questions on the inner heliosphere, such as: how the corona and solar wind are accelerated and heated; how the solar magnetic field evolves over a solar cycle; and how this field links into space. However, accurate spacecraft magnetometer measurements require reliable in-flight calibration. The magnetic interference caused by reaction wheels on magnetometer measurements in space is well known, and a common mitigation method is to use magnetic shielding. However, the presence of high-permeability material in-flight has the side-effect of distorting the true ambient field. We present a theoretical analysis of this distortion, and suggest a transfer function that can be used to recover the ambient field from the distorted dataset. Experimental measurements on a shield prototype for the Solar Orbiter mission agree with predictions to within an order of magnitude, demonstrating a distortion of approximately 1 part in 104.