The main characteristics of the Earth's dynamo are reviewed. The combined actions of Coriolisand Lorentz forces lead to the so--called ``magnetostrophic'' regime. We derive an estimate of the power needed to sustain the magnetic field in this regime. We show that an experimentwith liquid sodium can be designed to operate in the magnetostrophic regime. Such an experiment would bring most valuable informations on the mechanisms of planetary dynamos. In order toprepare this large--scale experiment and explore the magnetostrophic balance, a smaller scale liquid sodium set--up has been designed and is being built. It consists of a rapidly rotating spherical shell filled with liquid sodium, in which motions are set by spinning at a different rotation rate an inner core permeated by a strong magnetic field. We discuss the processes that can be explored with this new device
