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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-803</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>THEMIS: Spin Axis Magnetic Field Reconstruction</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Pöppelwerth</surname>
<given-names>Adrian</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6813-6313</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Auster</surname>
<given-names>Hans-Ulrich</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Angelopoulos</surname>
<given-names>Vassilis</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>McTiernan</surname>
<given-names>James M.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Lewis</surname>
<given-names>James W.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0005-4191-5906</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Plaschke</surname>
<given-names>Ferdinand</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5104-6282</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics, TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>25</day>
<month>02</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>20</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Adrian Pöppelwerth et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-803/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-803/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-803/egusphere-2026-803.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-803/egusphere-2026-803.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>The Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission investigates the coupling between the solar wind and Earth&apos;s magnetosphere using five identical spinning spacecraft. Each spacecraft rotates at a predefined rate to stabilize it and carries a suite of instruments, including a fluxgate magnetometer (FGM) that measures the three-dimensional magnetic field. Since May 24, 2024, the FGM on board THEMIS E has no longer recorded the magnetic field component along the spin axis, while the two components approximately within the spin plane remain fully available.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We present a method to reconstruct the missing magnetic field component using data from these two remaining components together with the spacecraft spin, yielding full three-component magnetic field vectors at spin-period resolution. The approach was validated using original THEMIS E data from 2017, when all three sensor components were available. The width of the residual distributions between reconstructed and original measurements is approximately 4 nT in the low-field magnetosphere, 12 nT in the high-field magnetosphere, 10 nT near magnetopause crossings, 14 nT in the magnetosheath, 6 nT in the quasi-parallel solar wind, and 3 nT in the quasi-perpendicular solar wind.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;These results demonstrate that on a spinning spacecraft, two components that are almost within but slightly out of the spin plane are sufficient to reconstruct three-dimensional magnetic field vectors at spin-period resolution, allowing continued magnetospheric observations despite the loss of one sensor component.</p>
</abstract>
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