IMAGE Mission Overview

J. L. Burch
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas

          The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) mission
is the first mission in NASA's MIDEX (Mid-size Explorer) program. It is the first
satellite mission that is dedicated to imaging the Earth's magnetosphere. IMAGE
will utilize the techniques of ultraviolet imaging, neutral atom imaging, and
radio plasma imaging to map out global distributions of the electron and proton
aurora; the helium ions of the plasmasphere; the ionospheric ion outflow; the
medium-energy ions of the near-Earth plasma sheet, ring current, and polar cusp;
the high-energy ions of the ring current and trapped radiation belts; and the
total plasma density from the ionosphere out to the magnetopause. The imaging
perspective is from an elliptical polar orbit with apogee at latitudes from 40 
degrees to 90 degrees in the northern hemisphere. For ultraviolet and neutral atom 
imaging, the time resolution is set by the two-minute spin period of the IMAGE 
spacecraft, which will be sufficient to track the development of magnetospheric 
substorms. An important feature of the IMAGE mission is its completely open data 
set with no proprietary data or intervals. All data, along with software needed 
for plotting and analysis, will be available within 24 hours of acquisition.

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Space Science Reviews, IMAGE Special Issue, Vol. 91, pp. 1-14, February, 2000