Superconducting rock magnetometer system

Abstract

A three axis magnetometer system intended for use in the magnetic measurement of lunar rock samples was designed, fabricated and delivered to NASA Manned Spacecraft Center. The system has a four inch diameter room temperature sample access region and is fitted with three orthogonal magnetic field sensors enclosing this region. Two superconducting magnetic shields are incorporated, which are designed to eliminate external magnetic noise from the sense coils. A superconducting solenoid is mounted coaxially with the sample region and this provides axial magnetic fields up to 1,000 gauss. The system was designed for measuring magnetic moments of geophysical samples, especially remanent moments of lunar samples. The sensitivity of the system in all three axes is about 2 x 10 to the -7th power EMU square root HZ peak to peak, measured in the 0 to 1 Hz bandwidth.