Using IMAGE Data for Space Weather

J. L. Green, S. F. Fung, R. Burley (Goddard Space Flight Center);
J. L. Burch (Southwest Research Institute);
W. W. L. Taylor (Raytheon STX Corporation)

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 on a time scale much
less than a substorm interval.

IMAGE has been designed to store and dump it's data at a
high rate approximately once per 13 hour orbit.  In
addition, IMAGE has a real-time link (44 kbs) that the
NOAA/Space Environment Center (SEC) will utilize for
Space Weather purposes.  NASA is developing software
that will produce browseable images from each of the
IMAGE instruments on an approximately 4 minute time
scale.  All the IMAGE mission software will be made
available to SEC.  The IMAGE mission will provide the
space weather community with a valuable and unique set
of globe images which may prove to be essential for
space weather model development and prediction in the
21st century.