A Simulated View of a Substorm: An IMAGE Perspective

J. L. Green, S. F. Fung, M.-C. Fok, T. E. Moore
    (Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, 20771, USA); 
D. L. Gallagher (Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL
    35812, USA); 
G. R. Gladstone (Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX
    78228, USA); 
G. R. Wilson (Mission Research Corporation, Nasua, NH 0306, USA);
J. D. Perez (Auburn University, Physics Department, Auburn, AL
    36849, USA);
W. Calvert (University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts,
    01854, USA);
P. H. Reiff (Rice University, Dept. of Space Physics and Astronomy,
    Houston, TX 77251, USA);


The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) is
NASA's first medium-sized Explorer mission and is scheduled to be
launched in January 2000. The overall science objective of IMAGE is to
determine the global response of the magnetosphere to changing
conditions in the solar wind. The science payload for IMAGE consists of
instrumentation for obtaining images of plasma regions in the Earth's
magnetosphere. The four types of imaging techniques used by IMAGE are:
neutral atom imaging (NAI), far ultraviolet imaging (FUV), extreme
ultraviolet imaging (EUV), and radio plasma imaging (RPI). The IMAGE
instruments will make concurrent global-scale images providing
researchers with an opportunity to readily observe the structure and
dynamics of the plasmasphere, ring current, aurora, geocorona, and the
magnetopause within a substorm. 

The IMAGE mission is being designed to generate browsable images from
each of its instruments on approximately a 4 minute time scale.  Using
appropriate models we will simulate what users of IMAGE data should
expect to see during a substorm. It is anticipated that IMAGE should be
able to illuminate the global development of magnetospheric substorm
dynamics.