New Magnetic Core Tech Powers Space-Weather Sensors for Future Missions

Image from NASA

The Materials Science Breakthrough

On September 30, 2025, NASA announced a new effort, led by a team at the University of Iowa, to design and manufacture high-fidelity ferromagnetic cores for fluxgate magnetometers used in space-weather sensing instruments.

These cores are manufactured through custom alloy melts, foil rolling, artificial aging, and integration into miniaturized sensors for spaceflight to realize higher performance in magnetic sensing.

Why Aerospace Mechanisms & Materials Matter

Magnetometers and the sensor mechanisms are crucial to spacecraft orientation, attitude control, and protection against charged particle environments. The materials science advance in magnetic cores affects the mechanical and structural design of sensor assemblies, mountings, gimbals, and electronics. Better magnetic sensing in aerospace systems translates to improved mechanical control of spacecraft mechanisms, deployables, and orientation systems; hence, materials innovation feeds directly into mechanical system performance.

The materials used in the sensor mechanism, such as magnetic cores, have to be designed with mechanical mounting, vibration isolation, thermal loads, and space environment in mind. Second, aerospace mechanism design needs to take into consideration the interaction of material behavior-magnetic anisotropy, thermal stability, and fatigue-with mechanical systems like sensor mounting, alignment, and gimbal mechanisms. Third, the coupling between materials science-sensor core alloys-and the mechanical system design related to sensor housings and mechanisms will become increasingly tighter as spacecraft evolve to be more autonomous and require better sensor fidelity.