The THEMIS Fluxgate Magnetometer (FGM) measures the background magnetic field and its low frequency fluctuations (up to 64 Hz) in the near-Earth space. The FGM is capable of detecting variations of the magnetic field with amplitudes of 0.01 nT, and it is particularly designed to study abrupt reconfigurations of the Earth's magnetosphere during the substorm onset phase. The FGM uses an updated technology developed in Germany that digitizes the sensor signals directly and replaces the analog hardware by software. Use of the digital fluxgate technology results in lower mass of the instrument and improved robustness. The present paper gives a description of the FGM experimental design and the data products, the extended calibration tests made before spacecraft launch, and first results of its magnetic field measurements during the first half year in space. It is also shown that the FGM on board the five THEMIS spacecraft well meets and even exceeds the required conditions of the stability and the resolution for the magnetometer.
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 ROSETTA Mission, the Planetary Cornerstone Mission in the European Space Agency's long-term programme Horizon 2000, will rendezvous in 2014 with comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko close to its aphelion and will study the physical and chemical properties of the nucleus, the evolution of the coma during the comet's approach to the Sun, and the development of the interaction region of the solar wind and the comet, for more than one year until it reaches perihelion. In addition to the investigations performed by the scientific instruments on board the orbiter, the ROSETTA lander PHILAE will be deployed onto the surface of the nucleus. On its way to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, ROSETTA will fly by and study the two asteroids 2867 Steins and 21 Lutetia.
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