“Our answer was to include superconducting power supplies on board. It’s cutting-edge technology straight out of the university lab, now demonstrated in an industrial setting. That allows us to energise the magnet with an onboard power supply so that it can continue to operate while there’s a plasma around it and we’ve disconnected everything else.”

The operating temperature for the superconductor is 90 Kelvin (–183°C), Mataira says. “But the colder you make them, the better they perform. … Our current prototype works at a design temperature of 50 K (–223°C).”