NASA Goddard Space Flight Center will conduct independent testing on each team’s prototype.įollowing Phase 4a, successful teams will integrate their magnetometers into their satellites and launch their systems, acquire data and share their results with NGA. In this new phase, the teams will receive several million dollars in awards, including a $1.55 million incentive prize purse, to develop their proposed magnetometers. Three winning teams from Phase 3 of MagQuest each proposed a magnetometer design to measure the Earth’s magnetic field. The MagQuest Demonstration Phase 4a will take place on HeroX, a social network platform for crowdsourced solutions. NGA has an extensive network of government partners collaborating on the WMM production, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the British Geological Survey, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Department of Defense (DOD), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) among others.Īs part of its core mission, NGA provides geospatial intelligence products and services to decision makers, military service members, and first responders. NGA’s MagQuest Challenge is promoting the development of miniaturized solutions to determine whether they can produce data useful to support WMM production. Today, the data is collected by satellites operated by the European Space Agency that will eventually reach the end of their useful life. Produced since 1905, the WMM originated with data collection from two ships surveying 500,000 miles of ocean. The model is used by thousands of systems for mobile navigation apps and is critical for military and commercial uses around the world. The WMM ultimately ensures the accuracy of navigation, because it corrects for differences in magnetic forces at a user’s location.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has launched the Demonstration Phase (Phase 4a) of its MagQuest Challenge to develop novel data-collection approaches for the World Magnetic Model. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency launches Phase 4a of MagQuest Challenge to advance NASA’s ability to measure Earth’s magnetic field Image: Credit: Petrovich9/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images