Magnetometers for space measurements over a wide range of field intensities

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Abstract
The exploration of the earth's magnetic field out to interplanetary regions has required magnetometers capable of measuring a wide range of field intensities. The past decade has witnessed considerable development of such instruments. Representative of these are the rubidium vapor magnetometer and fluxgates flown on OGO-5 by the Goddard Space Flight Center. For scalar measurements the rubidium vapor magnetometer, with a range of three gammas to fifty thousand gammas, has an error which reaches a maximum of 1.5 gamma at fifty thousand gammas. Present development is directed towards reducing the electronic phase shifts and the experiment weight. For vector measurements, the fluxgate system covers a range ± 4,000 gammas in each of three components with an error of of 0.1 % at the top of the range, and a resolution of ± 1/8 gamma. A fluxgate system is being developed to achieve an accuracy of .01 % up to 60,000 gammas. The current source which has been developed for this system has an accuracy of better than ± .005 % over a temperature range of ± 25°