If electronics are magnetic, how do they work in space?

Question

Only earth has north/south poles. This is not found in space. How can electronics work outside our earth?

Answer 1

Almost every premise of your question is wrong, unfortunately. Earth is not the only celestial body with a magnetic field — Jupiter, Saturn, and essentially every star (including the Sun), to name a few, all have powerful magnetospheres and north and south magnetic poles accordingly. (Mars and Venus are examples of planets that do not have magnetospheres of significant strength.) And Earth's magnetosphere extends far enough out to affect many satellites anyway.

As Hobbes already mentioned, electronics do not require an external magnetic field to function. Instead, they use internally generated electromagnetic effects, such as induction, semiconductivity, capacitance, and so forth. The presence of an external magnetic field doesn't influence those to any real extent, unless it's rapidly varying or ridiculously strong (e.g. close to a neutron star or some similarly exotic environment). So in a basic sense, not much really changes, and it's possible, with a bit of work, to use off-the-shelf components to do the same job out in space.

However, there's a subtler way in which earth-bound electronics do benefit from Earth's magnetic field. It traps much of the inbound cosmic radiation and solar wind, which are charged particles moving at high speed that can cause errors in calculation if they strike electronic components. (The atmosphere catches most of the rest.) So satellite components must be designed to tolerate higher levels of radiation than the equivalent on Earth, even if they're in a low earth orbit (LEO) where the magnetosphere still protects them, but especially if they operate in geostationary orbit (GEO) or farther out, outside the majority of geomagnetic radiation protection. This includes all interplanetary and lunar probes.

Answer 2

Electronics do not need a magnetic field to work.