The success of the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission depends on the accurate measurement of the magnetic field on all four spacecraft. To ensure this success, two independently designed and built fluxgate magnetometers were developed, avoiding single-point failures. The magnetometers were dubbed the digital fluxgate (DFG), which uses an ASIC implementation and was supplied by the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the analogue magnetometer (AFG) with a more traditional circuit board design supplied by the
The THEMIS mission includes a comprehensive ground-based measurement network that adds two additional dimensions to the information gained in the night magnetosphere by the five THEMIS spacecraft. This network provides necessary correlative data on the strength and extent of events, enables their onsets to be accurately timed, and provides an educational component in which students have an active participation in the program. This paper describes the magnetometers installed to obtain these ground-based North American magnetic measurements, including the magnetometers installed as part of the educational effort, and the support electronics provided by UCLA for the ground-based observatories. These magnetometers measure the Earth's magnetic field with high resolution, and with precise timing provided by the Global Positioning System. They represent UCLA's next generation of low-cost, ground-based magnetometers using an inexpensive personal computer for data collection, storage and distribution. These systems can be used in a standalone mode requiring only AC power. If there is Internet connectivity, they can be configured to provide near real-time data over the web. These data are provided at full resolution to the entire scientific community over the web with minimal delay.
The comprehensive THEMIS approach to solving the substorm problem calls for monitoring the nightside auroral oval with low-cost, robust white-light imagers and magnetometers that can deliver high time resolution data (0.33 and 2 Hz, respectively). A network of 20 Ground-Based Observatories (GBOs) are deployed across Canada and Alaska to support the collection of data from these instruments. Here we describe the system design of the observatory, with emphasis on how the design meets the environmental and data-collection requirements. We also review the design of the All Sky Imager (ASI), discuss how it was built to survive Arctic deployments, and summarize the optical characterizations performed to qualify the design to meet THEMIS mission requirements.
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