Instrument Development

All the hardware of the IMAP magnetometer was developed at Imperial College London.

The instrument is a conventional dual fluxgate instrument, based on the successful Solar Orbiter and JUICE magnetometer designs. It required a number of technology developments for IMAP:

Serial Data communications: the communications interface to the spacecraft is via a UART link, which has required an update to the Solar Orbiter hardware which uses a Spacewire link

Power interface: the power converter unit has been upgraded to interface with a less well regulated power bus: the input from the spacecraft is 24-35V, wider than the power input for Solar Orbiter

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 Cluster in Earth orbit.

In addition to IMAP, Imperial College hardware is in successful operation on 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.