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Magnetometer

  

The magnetometer consists of a three-axis sensor. It provides vector-component information as analog signals, suitable to determine magnitude and direction of the environmental magnetic field.  Relative to the spacecraft coordinate system (right handed x,y,z), the magnetometer outputs correspond to a right handed perpendicular-axis orientation.   The signs of the output voltages correspond to the signs of the magnetic vector components (the signs of the sensor coordinate axes). Three analog outputs with a tex2html_wrap_inline16473 10 Volts range represent the three vector components of the measured magnetic field. 

The magnetometer is mounted on the deployable antenna boom to displace it a sufficient distance from sources of stray magnetic fields within the S/C which would otherwise cause interference. The electronics are placed within the spacecraft structure.

 

 

Range 50 A/m
Scale factor 0.2 V/A/m
Bandwidth 1.0 Hz
Bias error < 0.5 A/m over the temperature range
Linear error < 5%
Alignment tex2html_wrap_inline16479 0.50
Table 1.3: Performance of the ROSAT magnetometer

   

The measurement performance parameters are given in Tab. 1.3.

After the loss of the Y-gyro, the magnetometer has been used for coarse target acquisition.  Extensive investigations to test the method were performed at MPE. The method became operational in 1991 October and after the loss of the Z-gyro and the degradation of the X-gyro replaces nearly the complete gyro package. 



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