The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has launched the final phase of a competition that seeking novel ways to collect data in support of a global model that is the standard for navigation and heading, selecting three winning teams to complete the design, build, and launch of their satellites.
The teams—Britain’s Iota Technology, Spire Global [SPIR] and Canada’s SBQuantum, and Univ. of Colorado Boulder—were previously selected to move into Phase 4a of the MagQuest challenge, during which each team successfully tested their miniaturized magnetometers that will be integrated into their respective cubesats for launch at the end of Phase 4b, Mike Paniccia, NGA’s program manager for the World Magnetic Model, told Defense Daily.
The evaluations were done at NASA’s magnetic testing facility at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and each team “got a big thumbs up,” Paniccia said.
During Phase 4b, the teams will complete their designs and build their systems with the launch or launches planned for 2025, Paniccia said. The satellites will be placed into low-Earth polar orbit with the Phase 4c data collection evaluation phase beginning in 2026, he said.
Around 2027, NGA expects to award a data collection contract or contracts to one or more of the teams to purchase magnetic data to be used in the World Magnetic Model (WMM), he said.
The goal of MagQuest is to develop magnetic measurement solutions for the WMM by 2030.
Currently, data for the WMM is gathered by three European Space Agency Swarm satellites that were launched in November 2013 and are nearing the end of their expected lives. The WMM is updated every five years and the Swarm satellites will inform the model for the 2025 update.
After that, the new satellites and their magnetometer sensors are expected to provide the data for the WMM in 2030. The WMM is used in navigation applications in everything from smart phones to airplanes.
“With the WMM being used by citizens and military around the globe, developing resilient infrastructure for the decades to come is critical for U.S. and allied partner competition and security,” Paniccia said in a statement.
The WMM is a joint product of the NGA and the United Kingdom’s Defence Geographic Centre and is developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Geological Survey. The Earth’s magnetic field is constantly changing, hence the need to update the model every five years to correct for the difference between the geographic and magnetic poles to trust the direction a compass is facing.
Iota Technology is teamed with Twin Leaf, Oxford Space Systems, and AAC Clyde for its solution. Univ. of Colorado’s team includes experts and faculty from the school’s various departments and labs. Spire is providing the satellite, ground station, and data processing expertise and SBQuantum brings its diamond-based quantum magnetometer technology.