Timeline

  • February 2022: HelioSwarm mission selected by NASA 
  • March 2023: UKSA awards Imperial College funding for HelioSwarm MAG for period up to March 2025, hardware development work initiated.

Upcoming milestones

  • June 2025: MAG Preliminary Design Review
  • June 2025 -July 2026: Electrical Model build and test
  • August 2026: EM delivery to NASA
  • September 2026: MAG Critical Design Review
  • April 2027: First Flight Model Delivery
  • June 2027: Flight Model 2, 3 and 4 Delivery
  • October 2027: Flight Model 5, 6 and 7 Delivery

January 2028: Flight Model 8 and 9 Delivery

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: 

MAGSim and IDPUEm integrated and demonstrating telemetry and telecommand link

Data communications: the communications interface to the spacecraft is via a UART link directly from the front end electronics to a central Instrument DPU on each spacecraft – previous designs have had a dedicated MAG processor, for HelioSwarm MAG will interface to a central payload processor. The interface has been demonstrated in July 2024 via a MAG simulator and iDPU emulator: full telemetry and telecommand functionality will be developed for the Electrical model hardware.  

MAG electronics box housing: electrical model build

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

Instrument Heritage 

Imperial College hardware is in successful operation on the Solar Orbiter spacecraft (launched 2020) and the JUICE spacecraft (launched April 2023).

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.

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