• Question: What is a Rasberry Pi magnetomometer?

    Asked by 723spcn52 to Xu, Kathryn, Ian, Hina, Andrew on 12 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Kathryn Burrows

      Kathryn Burrows answered on 12 Jun 2018:

      A raspberry Pi is a small computer, that is very cheap and easy to program. A magnetometer is a device used for measuring magnetic fields, but maybe some one else can answer better than me….

    • Photo: Andrew Margetts-Kelly

      Andrew Margetts-Kelly answered on 13 Jun 2018:

      What Kathryn said.
      You can get various magnetometers that plug into a Raspberry Pi. A Magnetometer is basically a compass. It measures the local magnetic fields and from those measurements you can work out which way you are pointing. On spacecraft we use them for two things:
      1. Mapping magnetic fields. This is very useful when studding the core of a planet or moon. Like we know Venus’ core is solid and not spinning because it has no magnetic field at all.
      2. For working out which way the Earth’s magnetic field is pointing so we can use out Magnetorquers to spin or de-spin the spacecraft.

Comments