• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.41-51
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• 2022

CubeSat is a satellite platform that is widely used not only for earth observation but also for space exploration. CubeSat is also used in magnetic field investigation missions to observe space physics phenomena with various shape configurations of magnetometer instrument unit. In case of magnetic field measurement, the magnetometer instrument should be far away from the satellite body to minimize the magnetic disturbances from satellites. But the accommodation setting of the magnetometer instrument is limited due to the volume constraint of small satellites like a CubeSat. In this paper, we investigated that the magnetic field interference generated by the cube satellite was analyzed how much it can affect the reliability of magnetic field measurement. For this analysis, we used a reaction wheel and Torque rods which have relatively high-power consumption as major noise sources. The magnetic dipole moment of these parts was derived by the data sheet of the manufacturer. We have been confirmed that the effect of the residual moment of the magnetic torque located in the middle of the 3U cube satellite can reach 36,000 nT from the outermost end of the body of the CubeSat in a space without an external magnetic field. In the case of accurate magnetic field measurements of less than 1 nT, we found that the magnetometer should be at least 0.6 m away from the CubeSat body. We expect that this analysis method will be an important role of a magnetic cleanliness analysis when designing a CubeSat to carry out a magnetic field measurement.