A Low-Cost Experimental Setup for Determination of the Residual Magnetic Dipole of Small Satellites

The residual magnetic dipole (RMD) moment is one of the primary disturbances in satellites, making its characterization essential for developing effective control strategies. This work presents a low-cost and compact experimental setup consisting of 12 cost-effective magnetic sensors, a nonmetallic structure, and dedicated software with the algorithms to estimate the dipole’s magnitude, direction, and location. In order to study the performance of the setup, three analyses were carried out. First, a simulation framework was prepared to study through Monte Carlo analysis the role of the ambient magnetic field noise, sensor installation errors, and number of sensors. It was found that, under typical laboratory conditions and installation errors, at least eight sensors should be used to obtain reliable estimations. Moreover, the simulation revealed that, in an environment with 150 nT of ambient noise and installation accuracy better than 0.1 mm and 0.1°, the errors of the estimated dipole magnitude, direction, and location are below 4%, 6°, and 7 mm for dipoles above 0.01 A $\cdot $ m 2 . Second, the performance of the experimental setup was tested by using a dipole generator. In an environment with 450 nT of ambient noise and for moderate fabrication quality, the setup achieved an error smaller than 11% in magnitude, 10° in direction, and 15 mm in location for dipoles greater than 0.2 A $\cdot $ m 2 . Finally, the setup was used to characterize the dipole parameters of a deorbit device (DD) based on electrodynamic tether technology. The results were consistent with an independent characterization performed with a conventional Helmholtz cage-based method.