Calibration of the Ørsted vector magnetometer

The vector fluxgate magnetometer of the Orsted satellite is routinely calibrated by comparing its output with measurements of the absolute magnetic intensity from the Overhauser instrument, which is the second magnetometer of the satellite. We describe the method used for and the result obtained in that calibration. Using three years of data the agreement between the two magnetometers after calibration is 0.33 nT rms (corresponding to better than ± 1 nT for 98% of the data, and better than ± 2 nT for 99.94% of the data). We also report on the determination of the transformation between the magnetometer coordinate system and the reference system of the star imager. This is done by comparing the magnetic and attitude measurements with a model of Earth’s magnetic field. The Euler angles describing this rotation are determined in this way with an accuracy of better than 4 arcsec.