Ganymede Magnetics Foundry

Ganymede Magnetics Foundry has made permanent magnets since 2171 for motors, generators and drive coils used across the Jovian system. Its plant beneath the ice of Ganymede consumes about 900 tonnes of neodymium and 70 tonnes of dysprosium a year, and the company decided long ago that it would rather find its own feedstock than depend on shipments from the inner system.

To that end the Foundry bought a survey toolkit from Ferrovane: twelve Pickaxe Survey Drones, one Gravwell Gradiometer Array and two Thumper Seismic Mappers, a package worth roughly 43.7 million credits. Its crews used the Thumpers on the Galileo Regio rare-earth layers, which assay 1,200 g/t neodymium and 140 g/t dysprosium, and the Foundry is expected to bid strongly when that ground comes up as auction lot 12.

Seismic Survey Lead Sunniva Okafor trained the Foundry's geophysicists and still reviews their processing. The Gravwell array is flown on a chartered Valkyrie Survey Corvette, and the company relies on a Nimbus Gas Skimmer for supply runs between Ganymede and Callisto when its own shuttles are busy.