The Ørsted Satellite Project

A Danish Microsatellite With a High Scientific Profile

Papers and reports


THE ORTHOGONALIZATION OF MAGNETIC SYSTEMS

 

Merayo, J.M.G. (1), F. Primdahl (1,2), P. Brauer (1), T. Risbo (3), N. Olsen (2), and T. Sabaka (4)

 

  1. Technical University of Denmark, Department of Automation, Building 327, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark. Phone: +45 4525 3452, Fax: +45 45 88 71 33, E-mail: jmgm@iau.dtu.dk
  2. Danish Space Research Institute, Juliane Maries Vej 30, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark.
  3. Geophysical Department, Copenhagen University, Juliane Maries Vej 30, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.
  4. NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, USA.

 

Abstract. The construction of an orthogonal reference frame based on a set of three skew axes for a magnetic coil system is discussed. For a skew system, it is possible to define the coil axes and the magnetic axes as a dual set of axes that are linked to the system. Therefore, one orthogonal reference frame can be identified from the coil axes and another from the magnetic axes. But there are also other possibilities. The parametrizations for the magnetic sensors CSC (Ørsted satellite) and CDC (Astrid-2 satellite) are analysed. In principle, only the transformation matrix that orthogonalizes the sensor is needed, but it is customary to express this matrix as function of some non-orthogonal angles. Therefore, most relevant conventions from the literature are presented for comparison. In case of small angle approximation that is valid for most sensors, they all agree.