Early results from Magsat
Papers presented at the May 27, 1981 meeting of the American Geophysical Union concerning early results from the Magsat satellite program, which was designed to study the near-earth magnetic fields originating in the core and lithosphere, are discussed. The satellite was launched on October 30, 1979 into a sun-synchronous (twilight) orbit, and re-entered the atmosphere on June 11, 1980. Instruments carried included a cesium vapor magnetometer to measure field magnitudes, a fluxgate magnetometer to measure field components and an optical system to measure fluxgate magnetometer orientation. Early results concerned spherical harmonic models, fields due to ionospheric and magnetospheric currents, the identification and interpretation of fields from lithospheric sources. The preliminary results confirm the possibility of separating the measured field into core, crustal and external components, and represent significant developments in analytical techniques in main-field modelling and the physics of the field sources.