On March 29, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) announced that it is sponsoring the launch of three small satellites this spring to revolutionize how we measure Earth’s magnetic field. Developed through MagQuest, a 6-year, multimillion-dollar global competition, the satellites will launch aboard the Transporter-16 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, planned for March 30.
“We are on the verge of proving that small, affordable satellites can deliver the high-quality magnetic data our nation depends on,” said Mike Paniccia, NGA’s program manager for the World Magnetic Model. “These teams have spent the past few years pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with CubeSat technology, and this launch is the moment where all of that ingenuity meets the ultimate test.”
This mission represents the first-ever effort to collect reliable geomagnetic data using CubeSat technology. Once in orbit, the three CubeSats, equipped with novel solutions for precisely measuring Earth’s magnetic field, will provide data to update the World Magnetic Model — a critical infrastructure that underpins navigation for military operations, commercial aviation, and everyday mobile devices worldwide.
The current World Magnetic Model, WMM2025, is maintained using data from the European Space Agency’s Swarm mission, launched in 2013. NGA launched the MagQuest competition in 2019, seeking new, more resilient ways to collect geomagnetic data.
The CubeSat solutions developed through MagQuest can be built, launched, and operated for a fraction of the cost of the current system. MagQuest also demonstrates the effectiveness of open innovation and interagency collaboration in tackling a vital national security challenge. Testing facilities and experts at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, supported technology evaluations and analysis; NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation administered the challenge; and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information provided technical support.
MagQuest’s open innovation approach intentionally attracted novel solutions from a unique group of innovators. Each team has developed a distinct CubeSat solution for collecting high-quality geomagnetic data from low-Earth orbit:
- Compact Spaceborne Magnetic Observatory CubeSat, University of Colorado Boulder
- Diamond-Powered Geomagnetic Data Collection from LEO, Spire Global and SBQuantum
- Io-1, Iota Technology
The teams delivered their completed satellites to Exolaunch for final integration for launch. Following a successful launch and satellite deployment, each team will begin geomagnetic data collection and compare their findings to WMM2025.
An expert review panel will evaluate each team’s data across key milestones. The results of MagQuest will inform NGA’s acquisition strategy for a WMM global magnetic field data collection capability, to support production of the next global update, WMM2030.
Source: NGA
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