Interpretation of satellite magnetometer data

Abstract

The MAGSAT satellite mission (Langel et al. 1982) obtained vector magnetic field measurements at altitudes ranging from 350 to 500 km above the earth's surface for a period of 7 months from November 1979 to June 1980. The satellite flew in a sun-synchronous near-polar orbit to achieve maximum coverage over the earth's surface and to minimize the effects of rapidly time-varying magnetic fields. The isolation of the crustal source anomaly components has proved to be a complex task involving the development of new geomagnetic field modelling techniques, improved methods for accounting for time-varying components and interactive techniques for critically selecting optimal data sets (Johnson & Dampney 1983).