Risk retirement activity for the NanoMagSat mission concept

The NanoMagSat mission concept consists of a LEO constellation of three 16U CubeSats for in-situ monitoring of the Earth's magnetic field and ionosphere, sharing commonalities and significant heritage with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Swarm mission. NanoMagSat requires to minimise magnetic disturbances on the payload measurement, in order to achieve sub-nano-Tesla level accuracy. It has been initiated by the Université Paris Cité, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) as scientific lead, CEA-Leti (FR) and Open Cosmos (UK). This paper summarises the Risk Retirement Activities (RRA) conducted for NanoMagSat after the conclusion of the system consolidation phase in 2020. The RRA have been conducted from January 2022 to October 2023 by a consortium of companies led by Open Cosmos (UK) under an ESA contract. The consortium included CEA-Leti (FR) as responsible for the payload and magnetic cleanliness activities and COMET Ingenieria (ES) and Prosix Engineering (ES) for the activities on the deployable boom and optical bench. The purpose of these activities was to increase the technological level (TRL) and reduce the risks in view of a potential mission implementation within the SCOUT Program. After the closure of the RRA contract, in February 2024, ESA's Program Board for Earth Observation consequently approved the NanoMagSat, which will now proceed to implementation as part of the SCOUT program [3]