Fluxgate Magnetometer Core Technology Demonstrator
A NASA Cubesat Launch Initiative Proposal from the Columbus Space Program
Contact Information:
Columbus High School
PI: Luther Richardson
1700 Cherokee Avenue
Columbus, GA 31906
(706) 888-3124
Fluxgate Magnetometer Core Technology Demonstrator
Proposed by the Columbus Space Program, a co-curricular science and engineering organization housed at Columbus High School
CubeSat Mission ParametersMission Name / Mass / Cube
Size / Desired Orbit / Acceptable Orbit Range / 400 km @ 51.6 degree incl. Acceptable – Yes or No / Readiness Date / Desired Mission Life
FluxDemonSat / 1.3kg / 1u / Altitude / 600km / 550km – 650km / No / July 2017 / 5 years
Inclination / 50 deg
CubeSat Project Details
Focus Area(s) (e.g. science, technology, education) / Student Involvement Yes or No / NASA Funding / Sponsoring Organization(s) / Collaborating Organization(s)
Yes or No / Organization / List / International – Yes or No
Technology, Education / Yes / No / Columbus Space Program, AMSAT / Prime Photonics / No
Points of Contact
Mission PI (Overall Systems Engineering, Science & Education Plan)
Organization / Columbus Space Program / Columbus High School / AstroSystems, LLCName / Luther Richardson
Title / Program Manager of CSP / Science Teacher / Chief Scientist
Address / 1700 Cherokee Ave, Columbus GA 31906
Phone / 706-888-3124
Fax / 706-748-2546
Email /
Engineering POC
Organization / AMSATName / Jerry Buxton
Title
Address
Phone
Fax
Payload Technical POC
Organization / Spatial MicrosystemsName / Keith Warren
Title / Chief Engineer
Address
Phone
Fax
Organization
Name / John Klingelhoeffer
Title
Address
Phone
Fax
Proposal Abstract:
FluxDemonSat proposes to advance the TRL level for NASA research class magnetometers with a new type of core material. Besides being a technology demonstration mission, this satellite will also have an education plan that uses an existing network of schools and teachers sponsored by NASA.
Proposal Detail:
The proposed FluxDemonSat mission has a technology and education prime focus area and a secondary focus area in science. The focus areas are outlined below in the mission objectives table with alignment with NASA Strategic Goals (FY2014) in orange text.
Primary Focus Area ObjectivesM1 (Technology) / Advancing the TRL level for the new type of core for fluxgate magnetometers will increase availability of research class magnetometers. (NASA SBIR Proposal #11-2 S1.06-8828 copy in Appendix)
Objective 1.7: Transform NASA missions and advance the Nation’s capabilities by maturing crosscutting and innovative space technologies.
Objective 2.3: Optimize Agency technology investments, foster open innovation, and facilitate technology infusion, ensuring the greatest national benefit.
GSFC Strategic Goal 1: Goddard Space Flight Center both enables and conducts science research from space.
M2 (Education) / Implement a wide spread education plan that will facilitate a network of data stations and opportunities for students to analyze data
Objective 2.4: Advance the Nation’s STEM education and workforce pipeline by working collaboratively with other agencies to engage students, teachers, and faculty in NASA’s missions and unique assets.
Objective 3.1: Attract and advance a highly skilled, competent, and diverse workforce, cultivate an innovative work environment, and provide the facilities, tools, and services needed to conduct NASA’s missions.
Secondary Focus Area Objectives
M3 (Science) / Contribute to investigation of the Earth’s magnetic field and its response to solar activity
Objective 1.4: Understand the Sun and its interactions with Earth and the solar system, including space weather.
Objective 2.2: Advance knowledge of Earth as a system to meet the challenges of environmental change, and to improve life on our planet.
Each objective will be addressed in the next section using its M-designation from the focus area table.
M1.
NASA has been using fluxgate magnetometers to measure magnetic field throughout the history of space exploration. The best magnetometers for space research have been coming from the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) with support for missions like the Voyager spacecraft, Mars Global Surveyor, and current missions like Messanger. These flagship missions have relied on the low noise high precision fluxgate magnetometers from the Mag Lab at GSFC. In recent years, there has been a shortage of the permalloy metal cores used at the heart of these fluxgate magnetometers due to diminishing supplies and a loss of the exact fabrication process. A Small Business Innovation Research grant was awarded to a company called Prime Photonics to manufacture a replacement core material using a newly developed metallic glass core. These cores are intended to serve as drop-in replacements for current NASA designs for fluxgate magnetometers. This CubeSat mission would fly a fluxgate magnetometer in the form factor of a small NASA design using a metallic glass core. The data would include magnetic field measurements that would be compared to a solid state magnetometer for verification, and also diagnostic data to confirm the performance of the metallic glass cores. The end result would be performance data on the metallic glass cores operating in a fluxgate magnetometer operating in a space environment advancing this new technology to a TRL-6 or TRL-7 depending on the results. TRL 7 is defined as: “A high fidelity engineering unit that adequately addresses all critical scaling issues is built and operated in a relevant environment to demonstrate performance in the actual operational environment and platform (ground, airborne or space). ” [NASA, 2007]
Fluxgate Magnetometers work by saturating the core material with magnetic field and using sense coils to react to changes in magnetic flux and circuitry can act to nullify the external field (closed loop sensor)
Cubesat FGM will measure Earth’s field to be compared to solid state magnetoresistive magnetometer reading – this comparison validates overall measurement ability
The FGM circuit will have a op-amp integrator that will output the microsecond time response of the core to be measured as a data output
Fluxgate Magnetometer Core (Idealized Diagram from Acuna, 1978) / Small NASA Fluxgate Magnetometer (image taken by proposal PI at NASA Goddard Mag Lab in 2004)The equation above describes the electric potential measured by the fluxgate magnetometer. Three of the terms are directly related to the core material and the noise level dictates the sensitivity of the measurement:
demagnetization factor (D), relative permeability (μr), and rate of change ability (dμrdt). These performance measures need to be verified on the ground and also in orbit. Ground and on-orbit measurements would be taken by the fluxgate and a solid state magnetoresistive magnetometer to verify performance measurements.
In terms of physics, the slope of the hysteresis curve showing the applied field and magnetization of the core material is equal to the permeability mr. Since the change of applied field is known electrically, the time also allows for measurements of permeability.
It takes a considerable engineering effort to make a spacecraft magnetically clean. This mission will take basic steps to minimize stray magnetic fields, but the focus is to obtain performance data on the coil inside of the fluxgate magnetometer. Stray magnetic field from electrical currents in the satellite will be filtered out by comparing simultaneous measurements by an industry standard solid state magnetometer in the payload section of the CubeSat.
M2.
The Columbus Space Program is a co-curricular science and technology organization housed in Columbus High School. Students from this program have been selected to fly their experiments on NASA suborbital rockets, balloons, space shuttles, ISS, and at drop towers numerous times. This group also has worked to develop a high altitude balloon program that has flown 23 missions to the edge of space with altitudes up to 118,500 feet. This proposed CubeSat mission would be an ideal central concept for a national outreach program. The goals of the outreach program would be to involve student groups from around the country in collecting data directly from the CubeSat and also analyzing it.
The education plan will reach out to students and teachers through the FIRST Robotics community, and teachers through the Network of Educator Astronaut Teachers (NEAT), as well as teacher workshops with the Teachers in Space organization. Ten percent population of undergraduate students at MIT have participated in FIRST Robotics so that this same group of high school students will become the next generation of scientists and engineers of the caliber most suited for the challenges of NASA missions.
M3
Several spacecraft missions including Cubesats have aimed to investigate the interaction between the Sun and Earth by measuring the magnetic field from orbit. FluxDemonSat would take data with as good or better sensitivity than the other missions. This satellite would offer another data point in time and space.
Measure changes in the Earth field over time with correlating data from ground based magnetometer measurements.
UC Berkley CINEMA mission to measure Earth-Sun interaction / Graphic showing source of magnetic source measurements from space by ESA’s Swarm missionMerit Review
Feasibility Review
Need for Collaboration à Prime Photonics, AMSAT
CharBroil manufacturing capability: parts made from student designs using laser cutting sheet metal machine, Wire EDM, lathe & milling machines
Prime Photonics supplying low noise metallic glass core designed for NASA FGM sensors
Auburn university’s clean room for final production of electrical circuits and integration
Columbus Space Program Robotics Lab (access to 3d printer)
AMSAT FOX satellite program (subsystem support)
Need to put the Prime Photonics NASA sized drop-in cores inside of a quality fluxgate magnetometer and measure performance while in orbit.
OPTIONS: Build our own fluxgate magnetometer or Obtain a small NASA magnetometer from Goddard Space Flight Center Mag Lab
Electronics. Designed, Built, & Tested by Columbus students with guidance by electrical engineer Keith Warren
Prime Photonics has a Small Business Innovation Research grant with NASA to produce quality low noise fluxgate magnetometer (FGM) cores that can act as drop in replacements for current NASA FGM sensors
Contact made with company CEO, Steve Poland. Agreement made that a flight on a Cubesat with relevant performance data would advance the TRL level of the cores. Agreement made that low noise cores with O.D. of 1.0 inches would be available within a year to us to be integrated into a FGM sensor for Cubesat flight.
AMSAT has launched multiple small satellite including Cubesats that have served the amatuer radio community with education programs
Columbus Space Program would fully manage the payload section of the FluxDemonSat mission
Students from Columbus Space Program would work with AMSAT engineers/mentors to use previously designed subsystems (COM, EPS, CDH, STR)
Skeleton Structure with deployed FGM using a spring loaded or motor deployed Copper Beryllium “tape measure”
The “V-diagram” from systems engineering illustrates the engineering approach to FluxDemonSat. Students will gain a full engineering life cycle experience.
This proposal will present a general feasibility, set of requirements, and some elements of high-level design.
Verification and Validation (V&V) will be accomplished using a set of design budgets:
Power Budget, Link Budget, Mass Budget, Cost Budget, and Schedule
• 23 high altitude balloon launches has built student knowledge:
• Communication Systems
• Electronics and Programming
• Integrated Process Teams
• DREAMS payloads will serve to test the performance of CubeSat payload prototypes at altitudes over 100,000 km
• DREAMS-24 is scheduled for Nov. 15: 16-bit magnetometer will fly and gather data
• Three or more DREAMS launches in the future dedicated to FluxDemonSat testing
• Subsystem Costs managed by AMSAT
• Payload Costs
• Magnetometer Cores $3000
• 3 axis Fluxgate Magnetometer (1 flight, 1 engineering, several 1-axis versions) $1000
• FGM drive circuit (several development versions + 1 flight + 1 engineering) $2000
• Three Balloon launches (DREAMS) for testing $2500
TOTAL BUDGET (Payload) $8500
Support: Georgia Space Grant $5000, US Army $1500 (Pursuing options for $2000 additional support – must be documented as letters of support in the proposal)
Costs are for materials and supplies. All labor and site costs are volunteered or donated.
Does the Proposal demonstrate that the CubeSat investigation provides benefits to NASA by addressing one or more of the goals and objectives of the NASA Strategic Plan?
• Are these the benefits that were reviewed in the merit review?
• Why is an orbital flight opportunity necessary or advantageous for providing these benefits to NASA?
Merit Review, Oct 31st
Feasibility Review, November 7th
Mr. David Rush (confirmed)
Mr. John Klingelhoeffer (confirmed)
Mr. Perry Ballard (USAF) confirmed
Michael Taylor (SpaceX), confirmed
Eryn Maynard (Google) confirmed
Bobby Russell (General Atomics), confirmed
Dr. Chris Spraggins (CHS), confirmed
Taylor Klotz (WTVM), confirmed
Christian Nelson (NASA), confirmed
What was the merit review process?
• Was the merit review competitive or non-competitive?
• What were the qualifications of the merit review committee members (if possible identify by name, title, and expertise)?
• What factors did the merit review use to assess merit?
• What was the outcome of the merit review?
• How did the Respondent respond to and/or address the findings of the merit review?
What was the feasibility review process?
• What were the qualifications of the feasibility review committee members (if possible identify by name, title, and expertise)?
• What factors did the feasibility review use to assess feasibility?
• How were the management team roles, experience, expertise, and the
organizational structure of the team assessed?
• How was the technical development risk associated with the overall CubeSat mission assessed?
• If the CubeSat investigation requires critical technology development for flight readiness, how were the areas assessed, and how were the plans for completing technology development assessed?
• Concerning the development of the CubeSat for flight, how was the probability of success assessed?
• What was the outcome of the feasibility review?
• How did Respondent respond to and/or address the findings of the feasibility review?
• Is there sufficient financial support for the development of the CubeSat payload and for all other costs incurred by Respondent to support its participation in the project?
CubeSat primary and, if appropriate, secondary focus area: scientific research question, technology development/demonstration, or education.