A NASA-sponsored team at the University of Iowa is restoring and advancing the nation’s capability to make high-fidelity magnetic field measurements needed to investigate space weather that can impact our communication and power grids on Earth and our assets in space. The UI team, led by Dr. David Miles, recently developed a new fluxgate magnetometer core to be used in the Space Weather Iowa Magnetometer (SWIM).

Fluxgate magnetometers are widely used space science and space weather instruments, but they depend on a legacy component—a ferromagnetic core—that was developed and manufactured for the U.S. Navy using technology that has been subsequently lost to the civilian community.

The UI team manufactures new fluxgate cores using a method that does not rely on legacy processes or materials and then integrates these cores into modern spaceflight magnetometers. The ferromagnetic cores are produced starting from base metal powders that are melted into custom alloys, rolled into thin foils, formed into the desired geometry of the fluxgate core, and artificially aged using heat to optimize their magnetic properties. The resulting cores are integrated into a complete fluxgate sensor ready for spaceflight applications.

Designing, prototyping, and manufacturing the cores, sensors, and paired electronics in house allows the team to explore new sensor geometries that are compatible with different missions. Most recently, the UI team developed a new core to be used in the Space Weather Iowa Magnetometer (SWIM).

See the complete article at https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/making-high-fidelity-fluxgate-cores-for-space-science-and-space-weather-missions/