Disturbance-aligned-frame gradiometer technique for removal of spacecraft-generated disturbances from the BepiColombo magnetic field data

Abstract Magnetic field measurements delivered by spacecraft are often contaminated by artificial magnetic fields generated by other instruments or spacecraft subsystems. In this work we propose an advanced multi-sensor data cleaning method able to remove $$3(N-1)$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> independent disturbances from N sensors data. The BepiColombo composite spacecraft is a good test-bed to illustrate the application of the proposed method. We identify five disturbance sources in the magnetic field data measured by the Mercury Planetary Orbiter magnetometer during the cruise phase, and apply the novel method to a 7 h interval to remove the disturbances. We show that all five disturbances are most probably produced by the solar panels of the Mercury Transfer Module. Graphical abstract