When: Friday, September 27, 2024 - Friday, January 26, 2024, 2:30 PM - 3:30 PMWhere: GO Jones 610
RadCube MAGIC: A CubeSat Technology Demonstration Story
Space-based measurements of the in situ magnetic field are fundamental to space physics, planetary science, and space weather. However, in many cases the available resources (mass, power etc) for instrumentation can be highly limited. To address this problem, Imperial College has developed the highly miniaturised MAGIC (MAGnetometer from Imperial College) instrument. MAGIC is based on Anisotropic Magneto-Resistive (AMR) technology, and is an order of magnitude smaller than traditional fluxgate instruments. In this talk I will discuss the development, implementation and flight of MAGIC on the RadCube Technology Demonstration CubeSat. RadCube launched in August 2021 to a sun-synchronous low-Earth polar orbit, with the main mission lasting until April 2022. Routine operations were subsequently extended to the end of 2022, with further special operations in 2023 and 2024 before re-entry in August 2024. I will review the RadCube observations made over more than two years in orbit. Key results from MAGIC on RadCube include meeting ESA space weather magnetic field measurement requirements with both the outboard and inboard sensor, as well as detection of field aligned current signatures at high latitude. Building on the success of RadCube, I will also briefly discuss the future implementations of MAGIC at the Moon and in the solar wind.