Instrument Development

All the hardware of the HelioSwarm magnetometers is being developed at Imperial College London. 

Each instrument will use a single fluxgate sensor, and spacecraft mounted electronics box containing front end electronics and a power supply.  The design is based on the successful IMAP, Solar Orbiter and JUICE magnetometer designs. Technology developments for this mission: 

Data communications: the communications interface to the spacecraft is via a UART link directly from the front end electronics to a central DPU on each spacecraft – previous designs have had a dedicated MAG processor, for HelioSwarm MAG will interface to a central payload processor.    

Multi-instrument build: HelioSwarm requires the simultaneous build of 9 flight units.  We are adapting our design and processes to streamline production.  

Instrument Heritage 

Magnetometers built in our labs at Imperial College London have successfully operated throughout the Solar System: on Cassini in orbit around Saturn; on Ulysses over the poles of the Sun; on Double Star in Earth orbit. 

Imperial College hardware is in successful operation on the four Cluster spacecraft in Earth orbit (launch 2000), the Solar Orbiter spacecraft (launched 2020) and the JUICE spacecraft (launched April 2023). 

We have also provided flight hardware for the Rosetta, Venus Express and Bepi Colombo spacecraft - see the magnetometer laboratory web pages for more information.