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

The presented article briefly explains the history and the success of applied magnetism, which has been the main focus of the research and development scientist group originally seated at Slovak Air Force Academy of Milan Rastislav Štefánik in Košice. The group has focused on measuring magnetic fields since 1982 when they developed the first digital magnetometer in former Czechoslovakia. Knowledge gathered during the development of the magnetometer and its further use for research activities led to wide industrial applications of magnetism after 1990. The industrial version of the magnetometer has been developed for the mining and steel production industry. The scope of research has been spread again and topics such as non-destructive diagnostics of machines, non-destructive archeological prospection, or magnetic navigation have been successfully solved. In 2014, the skCUBE project was started and the development of the first Slovak satellite began. Most of the knowledge in the field of applied magnetism has been used in the development of magnetic actuators and calibration methods for onboard magnetometers. The success of this work leads to cooperation on the following satellite mission GRBAlpha. Nowadays, the research is continuing in the project consortium focused on the scaling of the magnetic actuator for satellites in the weight category from 70 to 500 kg. The article explains the results of the development of satellite actuators. Laboratory measurements show that the efficiency of the actuator is almost doubled with respect to the standard commercial products in the 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.