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> e.g. magnetic station-keeping I've not kept up for decades now .. what's the state of solar powered magnetorquers these days? I'd quietly assumed it would be

by defrost 10mo ago

> e.g. magnetic station-keeping I've not kept up for decades now .. what's the state of solar powered magnetorquers these days? I'd quietly assumed it would be more commonplace. I dimly recall a couple of small satellites magnetically locking fifteen or so years past?

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> what's the state of solar powered magnetorquers these days? Academic. We don't currently have a pressing need for reactionless thrust in the magnetosphere. Each of semiconductors, launch vehicles and telecommunications standards are moving faster than satellites last.
- defrost 10mo ago
  Thanks for the reply. > Each of semiconductors, launch vehicles and telecommunications standards are moving faster than satellites last. That's certainly a pragmatic cost based argument for not using them in the fast moving world of commercial magnetosphere constellations. > Academic. I feel they've moved past academic and transitioned to deployed .. at some evolution of implementation. Not commercially relevant is certainly one state of play. I guess I was more interested in the nonlinear control issue in a field of highly variable intensity.
  - minetest2048 10mo ago
    A bit pedantic here.. I think you might be thinking about space tether propulsion. I don't know if that has been deployed yet. Magnetorquers, as in a device that uses magnets to rotate the satellite are very common in cubesats, you can buy it off the shelf
    - defrost 10mo ago
      Hmm, there's a throwback. I first encountered space tethers in 1980 reading an Introduction to Engineering text where the example was given of unrolling a flat spool of thin metal through shaping rollers to extrude a very long boom with a spring on the end to stabilise the orientation of a satellite. That was one of the first times I noodled about with the dynamics of a pendulum in a potential field. These days, of course, there's a few more tricks that can be done with a dangling lasso, including interacting with the magnetic field via a looped current. That aside, I was curious about traditional magnetorquers and their variations actively providing force in the magnetosphere. The Earths magnetic field has a lot of diurnal pulsing .. the gravitational field is lumpy but stable. There's a control challenge in getting a smooth desired response from a choppy field. Cheer's for the lookout though, it hadn't occurred to me that some would be talking about magnetic force against the field using "space tether" as the base description - my background was more about the field equations than the physical implementation. ( Magnetorquers are also used in the US Navy for twisting controls inside a fully sealed container. )

by defrost 10mo ago

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago

> what's the state of solar powered magnetorquers these days? Academic. We don't currently have a pressing need for reactionless thrust in the magnetosphere. Each of semiconductors, launch vehicles and telecommunications standards are moving faster than satellites last.

defrost 10mo ago
Thanks for the reply. > Each of semiconductors, launch vehicles and telecommunications standards are moving faster than satellites last. That's certainly a pragmatic cost based argument for not using them in the fast moving world of commercial magnetosphere constellations. > Academic. I feel they've moved past academic and transitioned to deployed .. at some evolution of implementation. Not commercially relevant is certainly one state of play. I guess I was more interested in the nonlinear control issue in a field of highly variable intensity.
- minetest2048 10mo ago
  A bit pedantic here.. I think you might be thinking about space tether propulsion. I don't know if that has been deployed yet. Magnetorquers, as in a device that uses magnets to rotate the satellite are very common in cubesats, you can buy it off the shelf
  - defrost 10mo ago
    Hmm, there's a throwback. I first encountered space tethers in 1980 reading an Introduction to Engineering text where the example was given of unrolling a flat spool of thin metal through shaping rollers to extrude a very long boom with a spring on the end to stabilise the orientation of a satellite. That was one of the first times I noodled about with the dynamics of a pendulum in a potential field. These days, of course, there's a few more tricks that can be done with a dangling lasso, including interacting with the magnetic field via a looped current. That aside, I was curious about traditional magnetorquers and their variations actively providing force in the magnetosphere. The Earths magnetic field has a lot of diurnal pulsing .. the gravitational field is lumpy but stable. There's a control challenge in getting a smooth desired response from a choppy field. Cheer's for the lookout though, it hadn't occurred to me that some would be talking about magnetic force against the field using "space tether" as the base description - my background was more about the field equations than the physical implementation. ( Magnetorquers are also used in the US Navy for twisting controls inside a fully sealed container. )