The IMAGE Mission - Seeing the invisible cusp J. L. Burch, Southwest Research Institute P. H. Reiff, Rice University M. F. Smith and J. L. Green, Goddard Space Flight Center The IMAGE mission, recently chosen by NASA as its first in the MIDEX (Mid-sized Explorer) line, promises to revolutionize our understanding of the magnetosphere by "imaging the invisible". IMAGE, which stands for "Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration", is scheduled to be launched by 1 January 2000. IMAGE contains neutral atom imagers (NAI's) in the low-energy (10-300 eV), mid-energy (1-30 KeV), and high-energy (10-200 KeV) ranges (LENA, MENA, and HENA, respectively); EUV detectors to image plasmaspheric Helium; and FUV imagers to monitor the aurora. The spacecraft will also include a Radio Plasma Imager (RPI), which will actively probe the magnetopause, plasmasphere, and cusp. The three instruments which will yield the most information on the cusp will be the LENA (which will at times be able to image the upflowing ion conics near the cusp); the RPI (which will at times be able to monitor the density structure within the cusp, and simultaneously monitor the distance to the magnetopause) and the FUV imager (which can monitor precipitating hydrogen in the cusp). More information about the IMAGE mission, its participating investigators, and its instruments can be found on the World-Wide-Web via http://bolero.gsfc.nasa.gov/~image/IMAGE.html. _______________ presented at the First European Geophysical Society Alfven Conference on Low-Altitude Investigation of Dayside Magnetospheric Boundary Processes, Kiruna, Sweden, September 9-13, 1996.