From Košice to the Orbit. A Successful Story of Applied Magnetism

Presented article briefly explain the history and the success of applied magnetism, that has been the main focus of research and development scientist group originally seated at Slovak Air Force Academy of Milan Rastislav Štefánik in Košice. The group was focused on measuring of magnetic field since 1982 when they develop the first digital magnetometer in former Czechoslovakia. Knowledge gathered during development of magnetometer and its further use for research activities led into wide industrial application of magnetism after 1990. The industrial version of magnetometer has been developed for mining and steel production industry. The scope of research has been spread again and topics as non-destructive diagnostics of machines, non-destructive archaeological prospection or magnetic navigation has been successfully solved. In 2014 the skCUBE project was started and development of first Slovak satellite began. Most of the knowledge in the field of applied magnetism has been used in development of magnetic actuators and calibration method for onboard magnetometer. Success of this work lead into cooperation on following satellite mission GRBAlpha. Nowadays, the research is continuing in the project consortium focused on the scaling of the magnetic actuator for satellites in weight category from 70 to 500 kg. The article explains the results of development of satellite actuators. Laboratory measurements shows that the efficiency of actuator is almost doubled in respect to the standard commercial products in CubeSat category. Based on this research the actuator can provide higher performance within the same volume, weight and input power, or provide the same performance and save volume, weight and input power.