The IMAGE Science and Mission Operations Center

R. J. Burley, J. L. Green and  S. E. Coyle
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

            The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) will
produce forefront science by quantifying the response of the magnetosphere to the
time variable solar wind. It will acquire, for the first time, a variety of
three-dimensional images of magnetospheric boundaries and plasma distributions
extending from the magnetopause to the inner plasmasphere. The images will be
produced on time scales needed to answer important questions about the
interactions of the solar wind and the magnetosphere. The IMAGE team will provide
open access to all IMAGE data. Thus there will be no proprietary rights or
periods. All IMAGE data products will be archived and available to the scientific
research community. 

The IMAGE mission will operate with a near 100% duty cycle with all instruments
in their baseline operational modes. A Science and Mission Operations Control
Center or SMOC has been developed at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)
to be the main data and command processing system for IMAGE. The IMAGE Level-0
data will be processed into Level 0.5 and Level-1 data and browse products within
24 hours after their receipt of raw data in the SMOC. These data products will be
transferred to the NSSDC, for long-term archiving, and posted immediately on the
world-wide-web for use by the international scientist community and the public.

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Space Science Reviews, IMAGE Special Issue, Vol. 91, pp. 483-496, February, 2000