Magnetic field experiment on the SUNSAT satellite

On Tuesday 23 February 1999, at 10:29 UTC, SUNSAT was launched into an 857×655 km, 96.47° polar orbit on a BoeingDelta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA. Both SUNSAT and ?rsted were NASA-sponsored secondary payloads accompanying the USA Air Force Argos satellite. In the process it became South Africaʹs (and Africaʹs) first satellite in space. Although sponsored by several private industrial organisations, it is essentially a student project with more than 96 graduate students in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Stellenbosch providing the majority of SUNSATʹs engineering development and operation since 1992. This paper reports on the magnetic field experiment on board the Sunsat satellite, consisting of two fluxgate magnetometers, called Orimag and Scimag, both built and calibrated by the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory. Orimag is mainly used for orientation control purposes on SUNSAT, while Scimag, mounted on a boom of 2.2 m is designed to perform geomagnetic field observations, employing standard navigation fluxgate technology.