The IMAGE Mission

S. F. Fung (1), J. L. Burch (2) and J. L. Green (1)

1 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.
2 Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas, USA

Email:  fung@ndads.gsfc.nasa.gov  Fax: 1-301-286-6301

The application of remote sensing techniques has a high potential of obtaining 
unprecedented data on the dynamics of storm and substorm processes and in 
particular determining the relationship between a variety of global phenomena. 
The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) mission has 
an impressive array of remote sensing instruments which will image a number of 
important phenomena such as the auroral zone, the geocorona, the ring current, 
the plasmasphere, auroral ion fountain, and the magnetopause on a time scale 
of 5 minutes.  IMAGE will be placed in a polar orbit with apogee of about 7 
Earth radii (RE) where it will be well situated to observe the structure and 
dynamics of the magnetospheric boundaries during geomagnetic storms. With the 
successful launch of IMAGE in early 2000 a near era in magnetospheric remote 
sensing will begin.  This paper will provide an overview of some of the early 
measurements from the IMAGE instruments illustrating many aspects of the 
dynamics of the global magnetosphere.

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The 33nd COSPAR Scientific Assembly, Warsaw Poland, July 19-23, 2000
Symposium: Advances in Global Magnetospheric Structure, Dynamics, and Region 
Coupling