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IMAGE (spacecraft)
IMAGE (Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration, Explorer 78 or MIDEX-1) was a NASA Medium Explorer mission that studied the global response of the Earth's magnetosphere to changes in the solar wind. It was believed lost but as of August 2018 might be recoverable. It was launched 25 March 2000, at 20:34:43.929 UTC, by a Delta II launch vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a two-year mission. Almost six years later, it unexpectedly ceased operations in December 2005 during its extended mission and was declared lost. The spacecraft was part of NASA's Sun-Earth Connections Program, and its data has been used in over 400 research articles published in peer-reviewed journals. It had special cameras that provided various breakthroughs in understanding the dynamics of plasma around the Earth. The principal investigator was Jim Burch of the Southwest Research Institute.
In January 2018, an amateur satellite tracker found it to be transmitting some signals back to Earth. NASA made attempts to communicate with the spacecraft and determine its payload status, but has had to track down and adapt old hardware and software to the current systems. On 25 February 2018, contact with IMAGE was again lost only to be reestablished on 4 March 2018. The signal disappeared once again on 5 August 2018. If recovery efforts succeed, NASA may decide to fund a restarted mission.
IMAGE was the first spacecraft dedicated to imaging the Earth's magnetosphere. IMAGE was a spacecraft developed by the Medium-class Explorer (MIDEX) program, and it was the first spacecraft dedicated to observing the magnetosphere of the Earth, producing comprehensive global images of plasma in the inner magnetosphere. The IMAGE craft was placed in a 1,000 km (620 mi) × 46,004 km (28,586 mi) orbit around the Earth, with an inclination of 90.01° (passing over the poles) and a 14.2 hour period.
By acquiring images every 2 minutes in wavelengths invisible to the human eye, it allowed detailed study of the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetosphere and the magnetosphere's response during a magnetic storm. From its distant orbit, the spacecraft produced a wealth of images of the previously invisible region of space in the inner magnetosphere, exceeded all its scientific goals. A senior review in 2005, just previous to its loss, described the mission as "extremely productive", having confirmed several theoretical predictions (e.g. plasmasphere plumes, pre-midnight ring-current injection, and continuous antiparallel reconnection), discovered numerous new and unanticipated phenomena (e.g. plasmasphere shoulders, subauroral proton arcs, and a secondary interstellar neutral atom stream), and answered a set of outstanding questions regarding the source region of kilometric continuum radiation, the role of solar wind pressure pulses in ionospheric outflow, and the relationship between proton and electron auroras during substorms. When the spacecraft went silent in December 2005, it had already been approved a mission extension until 2010.
Costs for IMAGE are estimated at US$132 million, including the spacecraft, instruments, launch vehicle, and ground operations.
Its science payload consists of three suites of instruments:
The Central Instrument Data Processor (CIDP) as well as the Command & Data Handling Subsystem (main on-board computer) were built around the mission-proven IBM RAD6000 avionics processors.
The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUV) of the IMAGE mission observes the distribution of He+ in Earth's plasmasphere by detecting its resonantly-scattered emission at 30.4-nm. It records the structure and dynamics of the cold plasma in Earth's plasmasphere on a global scale. The 30.4-nm feature is relatively easy to measure because it is the brightest ion emission from the plasmasphere, it is spectrally isolated, and the background at that wavelength is negligible. Measurements are easy to interpret because the plasmaspheric He+ emission is optically thin, so its brightness is directly proportional to the He+ column abundance. Effective imaging of the plasmaspheric He+ requires global "snapshops" in which the high apogee and the wide field of view of EUV provide in a single exposure a map of the entire plasmasphere. EUV consists of three identical sensor heads, each having a field of view of 30° in diameter. These sensors are tilted relative to one another to cover a fan-shaped field of 84° by 30°, which is swept across the plasmasphere by the spin of the satellite. EUV's spatial resolution is 0.6° of 0.1 RE in the equatorial plane seen from apogee. The sensitivity is 1.9 count/second-rayleigh, sufficient to map the position of the plasmapause with a time resolution of 10 minutes.
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IMAGE (spacecraft) AI simulator
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IMAGE (spacecraft)
IMAGE (Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration, Explorer 78 or MIDEX-1) was a NASA Medium Explorer mission that studied the global response of the Earth's magnetosphere to changes in the solar wind. It was believed lost but as of August 2018 might be recoverable. It was launched 25 March 2000, at 20:34:43.929 UTC, by a Delta II launch vehicle from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a two-year mission. Almost six years later, it unexpectedly ceased operations in December 2005 during its extended mission and was declared lost. The spacecraft was part of NASA's Sun-Earth Connections Program, and its data has been used in over 400 research articles published in peer-reviewed journals. It had special cameras that provided various breakthroughs in understanding the dynamics of plasma around the Earth. The principal investigator was Jim Burch of the Southwest Research Institute.
In January 2018, an amateur satellite tracker found it to be transmitting some signals back to Earth. NASA made attempts to communicate with the spacecraft and determine its payload status, but has had to track down and adapt old hardware and software to the current systems. On 25 February 2018, contact with IMAGE was again lost only to be reestablished on 4 March 2018. The signal disappeared once again on 5 August 2018. If recovery efforts succeed, NASA may decide to fund a restarted mission.
IMAGE was the first spacecraft dedicated to imaging the Earth's magnetosphere. IMAGE was a spacecraft developed by the Medium-class Explorer (MIDEX) program, and it was the first spacecraft dedicated to observing the magnetosphere of the Earth, producing comprehensive global images of plasma in the inner magnetosphere. The IMAGE craft was placed in a 1,000 km (620 mi) × 46,004 km (28,586 mi) orbit around the Earth, with an inclination of 90.01° (passing over the poles) and a 14.2 hour period.
By acquiring images every 2 minutes in wavelengths invisible to the human eye, it allowed detailed study of the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetosphere and the magnetosphere's response during a magnetic storm. From its distant orbit, the spacecraft produced a wealth of images of the previously invisible region of space in the inner magnetosphere, exceeded all its scientific goals. A senior review in 2005, just previous to its loss, described the mission as "extremely productive", having confirmed several theoretical predictions (e.g. plasmasphere plumes, pre-midnight ring-current injection, and continuous antiparallel reconnection), discovered numerous new and unanticipated phenomena (e.g. plasmasphere shoulders, subauroral proton arcs, and a secondary interstellar neutral atom stream), and answered a set of outstanding questions regarding the source region of kilometric continuum radiation, the role of solar wind pressure pulses in ionospheric outflow, and the relationship between proton and electron auroras during substorms. When the spacecraft went silent in December 2005, it had already been approved a mission extension until 2010.
Costs for IMAGE are estimated at US$132 million, including the spacecraft, instruments, launch vehicle, and ground operations.
Its science payload consists of three suites of instruments:
The Central Instrument Data Processor (CIDP) as well as the Command & Data Handling Subsystem (main on-board computer) were built around the mission-proven IBM RAD6000 avionics processors.
The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUV) of the IMAGE mission observes the distribution of He+ in Earth's plasmasphere by detecting its resonantly-scattered emission at 30.4-nm. It records the structure and dynamics of the cold plasma in Earth's plasmasphere on a global scale. The 30.4-nm feature is relatively easy to measure because it is the brightest ion emission from the plasmasphere, it is spectrally isolated, and the background at that wavelength is negligible. Measurements are easy to interpret because the plasmaspheric He+ emission is optically thin, so its brightness is directly proportional to the He+ column abundance. Effective imaging of the plasmaspheric He+ requires global "snapshops" in which the high apogee and the wide field of view of EUV provide in a single exposure a map of the entire plasmasphere. EUV consists of three identical sensor heads, each having a field of view of 30° in diameter. These sensors are tilted relative to one another to cover a fan-shaped field of 84° by 30°, which is swept across the plasmasphere by the spin of the satellite. EUV's spatial resolution is 0.6° of 0.1 RE in the equatorial plane seen from apogee. The sensitivity is 1.9 count/second-rayleigh, sufficient to map the position of the plasmapause with a time resolution of 10 minutes.