The Solar Orbiter magnetometer

¹ Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK
e-mail: t.horbury@imperial.ac.uk
² Evonetix Ltd, Cambridge, UK
³ Arquimea Ingenieria, Madrid, Spain
⁴ Atomio, Lille, France
⁵ CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
⁶ Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Holmbury St. Mary, UK
⁷ School of Physics and Astronomy, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, UK
⁸ SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
⁹ Univ. Reading, Dept. Meteorol., Reading RG6 6BB, Berks, UK
¹⁰ Centre for Fusion, Space & Astrophysics, Physics Dept., University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
¹¹ Jeremiah Horrocks Institute, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK
¹² Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-7450, USA
¹³ Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria
¹⁴ University of Calabria, Dipartimento Fis, Arcavacata di Rende, Cosenza, Italy
¹⁵ Wigner RCP, Budapest, Hungary
¹⁶ Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, U. Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
¹⁷ Technical University of Braunschweig, IGEP, Mendelssohnstr. 3, Braunschweig, Germany
¹⁸ University of Maryland Baltimore County, Goddard Planetary Heliophys Inst., Baltimore, MD, USA
¹⁹ Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
²⁰ LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Universite PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Universite, Universite de Paris, 5 Pl. Jules Janssen, 92190 Meudon, France
²¹ Institut für Experimentelle und Angewandte Physik, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany
²² University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
²³ Universidad de Alcala, Madrid, Spain
²⁴ NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, USA
²⁵ Predictive Science Inc., San Diego, CA, USA
²⁶ University of California Los Angeles, Inst. Geophys. & Planetary Phys., Dept. Earth Planetary & Space Sci., Los Angeles, CA, USA
²⁷ University of Turku, Dept. Phys. & Astron., Turku, Finland
²⁸ Technical University of Denmark, Natl. Space Inst., Copenhagen, Denmark
²⁹ Center for Space and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR) and Department of Space Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, USA
³⁰ European Space Agency, ESTEC (SCI-S), PO Box 299, Noordwijk 2200 AG, The Netherlands
³¹ European Space Agency, ESAC (SCI-S), Madrid, Spain
³² University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
³³ Physics Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-7300, USA

Received: 4 December 2019
Accepted: 27 January 2020

Abstract

The magnetometer instrument on the Solar Orbiter mission is designed to measure the magnetic field local to the spacecraft continuously for the entire mission duration. The need to characterise not only the background magnetic field but also its variations on scales from far above to well below the proton gyroscale result in challenging requirements on stability, precision, and noise, as well as magnetic and operational limitations on both the spacecraft and other instruments. The challenging vibration and thermal environment has led to significant development of the mechanical sensor design. The overall instrument design, performance, data products, and operational strategy are described.