A. Title: "IMAGE: Seeing the Invisible"
B. Description: Launched March 25, 2000, NASA's IMAGE - Imager for Magnetopause to Aurora Global Exploration - mission is the first mission dedicated to obtaining global images of the Earth's magnetosphere, the region of space controlled by the Earth's magnetic field and populated with extremely tenuous plasmas of both solar and terrestrial origin. IMAGE employs a variety of innovative imaging techniques to image these plasmas, which are invisible to standard astronomical observing techniques, and to learn how their structure and dynamics change in response to variations in the solar wind. Members of the IMAGE science team will present "first light" images from all the IMAGE instruments, including the first-ever global images of the plasmasphere and the Earth's proton aurora, and will discuss the implications of such images for our understanding of magnetospheric physics and space weather.
C. Panelists:
James L. Burch, IMAGE Principal Investigator
Vice President
Instrumentation and Space Research Division
Southwest Research Institute
San Antonio TX 78228-0510
e-mail: jburch@swri.edu
James L. Green, Deputy Project Scientist for the IMAGE Mission
Chief, Space Science Data Operations Office
Code 630
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt MD 20771
e-mail: green@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov
Patricia H. Reiff, IMAGE Education and Public Outreach Team Member
Professor, Physics and Astronomy Department
Rice University
Houston TX 77251
e-mail: reiff@alfven.rice.edu
The following IMAGE investigators will also be present to answer questions relating to their experiments:
Donald G. Mitchell, Lead Investigator, High-Energy Neutral Atom Imager
Principal Professional Staff Scientist
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Laurel MD 20723
e-mail: Donald.G.Mitchell@jhuapl.edu
Craig J. Pollock, Lead Investigator, Medium-Energy Neutral Atom Imager
Principal Scientist
Southwest Research Institute
San Antonio TX 78228-0510
e-mail: cpollock@swri.edu
Thomas E. Moore, Lead Investigator, Low-Energy Neutral Atom Imager
Head, Interplanetary Physics Branch, Laboratory for Extraterrestrial Physics
Code 692
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt MD 20771
e-mail: thomas.e.moore@gsfc.nasa.gov
Bodo W. Reinisch, Lead Investigator, Radio Plasma Imager
Professor, Center for Atmospheric Research
University of Massachusetts-Lowell
Lowell MA 01854
e-mail: bodo_reinisch@uml.edu
Bill R. Sandel, Lead Investigator, IMAGE Extreme Ultraviolet Imager
Senior Research Scientist
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
University of Arizona
Tucson AZ 85721
e-mail: sandel@arizona.edu
Stephen B. Mende, Lead Investigator, IMAGE FUV Imager
Senior Fellow
Space Sciences Laboratory
University of California
Berkeley CA 94720
e-mail: mende@ssl.berkeley.edu