Magnetometers based on helium-4 excited to its metastable triplet state thanks to a plasma discharge have been developed in the 1960s and 70s by Texas Instruments, then by its spinoff Polatomic, and from late 1980s by CEA-Leti. The latter pioneered a configuration which cancels the dead-zones, which are a recurrent problem of atomic magnetometers. This configuration was demonstrated to show an accuracy of 50 pT in orbit operation. The ESA chose this technology for the Swarm mission, which was launched in 2013. An experimental vector mode, which could compete with fluxgate magnetometers was tested in this mission with overall success.