The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE):
   Science Mission

S. A. Fuselier, (Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center,
  Palo Alto CA 94304; (650) 424-3334; email: fuselier@spasci.com),
  Respresenting the IMAGE Team

The New Millennium Magnetosphere: Integrating Imaging, Discrete
  Observations, and Global Simulations, Sixth Huntsville Modeling Workshop,
  Guntersville, Alabama, 26-30 October 1998.


The IMAGE medium explorer mission consists of eight imaging
instruments which together will address the global response of the
magnetosphere to the changing conditions in the solar wind. The
specific science questions that this mission will address are:
1) What are the dominant mechanisms for injecting plasma into the
magnetosphere on substorm and magnetic storm time scales? 2) What
is the directly driven response of the magnetosphere to solar wind
changes? and 3) How and where are magnetospheric plasmas energized,
transported, and subsequently lost during storms and substorms?
Although the science questions are familiar, the way in which the
IMAGE mission addresses them is unique. There has never been a space
physics mission like IMAGE. The entire mission payload is devoted to
remote sensing of the magnetosphere and its boundaries. This talk
describes some of the unique capabilities of the IMAGE payload,
illustrates the mission timeline, and focuses on the unique approach
to the science questions that the mission will address.