NGA Announces Winners of MagQuest Competition

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency announced the final results of MagQuest, a $2.1 million competition to advance how we measure Earth’s magnetic field.

Over 18 months, the challenge accelerated novel data collection methodologies for the World Magnetic Model (WMM). The first place winner Iota Technology will be awarded $350,000 and two second place winners — Spire Global and SB Quantum, and University of Colorado Boulder — will receive $225,000 each. Runners-up Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium and Stellar Solutions will each receive $50,000.

The teams invited to Phase 3 had six months to prepare a submission that demonstrated completion of major design decisions, described specific hardware and software selections, detailed testing approaches to mitigate risks and provided evidence in support of overall performance.

The results of MagQuest will inform NGA’s acquisition strategy for a WMM global magnetic field data collection capability, with an anticipated procurement that can provide operational capacity by 2027.