NASA's IMAGE mission, a unique satellite dedicated to the study of space storms, has returned its first pictures of electrified gas surrounding our planet. Using antennas as large as the Empire State Building, IMAGE is taking an unprecedented look at Earth's magnetic environment and its response to fierce gusts of solar wind.
PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 487 June 2, 2000
by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
THE FIRST GLOBAL IMAGE OF THE EARTH'S PLASMASPHERE, the shell of positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons lying at the top of our atmosphere and extending far out into space, has been recorded by the Imager for Magnetosphere to Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) satellite. The ability to view the Earth and its environs through plasma- colored glasses is important for understanding basic geophysics properties of the Earth and for monitoring "space weather," the general name for disturbances in our planet's vicinity caused by fields and particles coming from the sun. A violent storm on the sun can, a few days later, pose hazards for satellites and even ground-based power grids. IMAGE performs its sentry duty by photographing the glow caused when light or particles coming directly from the sun or nearby particles whipped up to high energies smash into atoms in our upper atmosphere. Launched in March 2000, the IMAGE spacecraft follows a highly eccentric orbit which takes it far enough from the Earth that at times the whole planet, and its fluorescing plasma, can be captured within the photographic frame. First data from the IMAGE mission were reported this week by James Burch, Southwest Research Institute (210-522-2526) and several colleagues at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Washington, DC. One surprise: a picture of the helium glow around the Earth at extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths (see figure at http://www.aip.org/physnews/graphics) exhibited unexplained lobe structures. Another first: separate ultraviolet movies of electron and proton auroras were shot simultaneously by using filters that discriminate among fluorescence at different wavelengths coming from hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere; EUV at 121 nm, for instance, comes from energetic protons resonantly scattering from hydrogen atoms. To locate more precisely the position and velocity of the plasma clouds being viewed, IMAGE uses an immense cross-shaped radio antenna (mission scientist James Green of Goddard Space Flight Center called it a "radar cop in the sky") measuring 500 meters from tip to tip (longer than the Empire State Building is tall, or equivalent to three Washington Monuments laid end to end), making it the longest manmade structure in space. (See also the IMAGE website.)
NEWSALERT: Thursday, June 1, 2000 @ 1232 GMT
The latest news from Astronomy Now and Spaceflight Now
NASA Space Science News for March 27, 2000
NASA's newest space weather satellite soared into space on a Delta II rocket this weekend.
Two of our older articles about IMAGE:
The RADAR Cop in Space
Space Weather Mission Nears Launch
NASA News
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
John F. Kennedy Space Center
Kennedy Space Center, Florida 32899
March 17, 2000
The IMAGE satellite is the first spacecraft dedicated to imaging the Earth's magnetosphere, a region of space controlled by the Earth's magnetic field that contains extremely tenuous plasmas of both solar and terrestrial origin. IMAGE employs a variety of imaging techniques to "see the invisible" and to produce the first comprehensive global images of plasma in the inner magnetosphere. Within a day of acquiring the data, images from each of the eight instruments will be available to the entire space science community through the Internet.
The spin-stabilized IMAGE satellite will be placed into an elliptical orbit over the poles, completing an orbit of the earth every 13.5 hours. During the course of the two-year primary mission, this orbit will afford the spacecraft a sweep twice through all local time zones. It also maximizes the amount of time the orbit's high point is at higher latitudes affording the best perspective for global imaging.
NASA Television is carried on GE-2, transponder 9C located at 85 degrees West longitude. "Audio only" of IMAGE coverage on NASA TV will be available on the "V" circuits that may be reached by dialing 321/867-1220, 1240, 1260, 7135, 4003, 4920.
The launch of IMAGE will also be webcast via the NASA-KSC Home Page.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems
IMAGE, led by Dr. James L. Burch of SwRI, was selected by NASA to be the first Medium-class Explorer Mission. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD manages the IMAGE mission. The IMAGE spacecraft was built, integrated with its payload, and tested at the Space Systems facility in Sunnyvale.
"We're enormously pleased to see IMAGE on its way to launch," said Ron Paulson, Space Systems Sunnyvale vice president of remote sensing and space science. "The entire IMAGE team here feels very satisfied that three years of intense effort has paid off and that the best possible spacecraft is finally about to begin its mission."
Space Systems Sunnyvale was chosen in 1996 by the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) of San Antonio to build the spacecraft for IMAGE. In addition, the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Palo Alto was involved with the development of two of the IMAGE scientific instruments, and ATC personnel developed a star tracker used on the spacecraft for attitude determination and pointing.
Following launch, the IMAGE observatory will be inserted into a highly elliptical polar orbit. The spin-stabilized spacecraft will be oriented so that the IMAGE viewing instruments scan the Earth each spacecraft revolution. The mission will last for two years.
IMAGE will be the first mission dedicated to imaging the magnetosphere as it changes shape. IMAGE will use three-dimensional imaging techniques to study the global response of the Earth's magnetosphere to variations in the magnetic activity of the Sun. The magnetosphere is the region of space controlled by the Earth's magnetic field and populated with plasma -- a gas consisting of equal numbers of positively and negatively charged particles -- of both solar wind and ionospheric origin. Its behavior is strongly influenced by the solar wind, the supersonic stream of charged particles flowing out from the Sun.
The most familiar manifestation of the magnetosphere's interaction with the solar wind are auroras -- the Northern and Southern Lights. These colorful and sometimes impressive displays result from the impact of magnetospheric charged particles with the gases of the Earth's upper atmosphere. Especially spectacular auroras are associated with geomagnetic storms, which are caused by disturbances in the solar wind. In addition to triggering intense auroral activity, geomagnetic storms can affect space systems, power grids and communications. It is thus important to understand such storms and be able to predict them.
IMAGE will provide the first opportunity to image magnetospheric regions on a global scale. IMAGE will use three different experimental techniques to carry out its mission: radio sounding, ultraviolet imaging, and neutral atom imaging. A radio sounder will probe the boundaries of the magnetosphere and the plasmasphere (a dense region of cold ionospheric plasma surrounding the Earth in the inner magnetosphere), while ultraviolet imagers study the aurora and the structure of the plasmasphere. Global images of magnetospheric ion populations from a suite of three neutral atom imagers will yield information about magnetospheric plasma sources and about the behavior of the inner magnetosphere under both quiet and magnetic storm conditions. The neutral atom imagers detect neutral atoms created from magnetospheric ions through a process known as charge exchange. IMAGE will be the first space science mission to employ this technique extensively over a wide range of particle energies.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Sunnyvale, Calif., is a leading supplier of satellites and space systems to military, civil government and commercial communications organizations around the world. These spacecraft and systems have enhanced military and commercial communications; provided new and timely remote-sensing information; and furnished new data for thousands of scientists studying our planet and the universe.
High and low resolution images of the IMAGE spacecraft are available for
downloading at the following URL:
http://lmms.external.lmco.com/photos/civil_space/image/image.html
For more information about Lockheed Martin Space Systems, see our website
at:
http://lmms.external.lmco.com
For more information about the IMAGE mission and its instruments, go to:
http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
March 16, 2000
A Delta II 7326 rocket is scheduled to launch the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration, or IMAGE, satellite into orbit March 25 from the Western Range at Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA. The eight-minute launch window for IMAGE opens at 3:35 p.m. EST (12:35 p.m. PST).
IMAGE is the first of its kind, designed to actually "see" most of the major charged-particle systems in the space surrounding Earth. Previous spacecraft explored the magnetosphere by detecting particles and fields they encountered as they passed through them. This technique limited their "vision" to small portions of this vast and dynamic field, which extends about 40,000 miles on Earth's day side and about 110,000 miles on Earth's night side. It would be similar to attempt understanding the nature of the world's oceans from a single buoy.
Just as taking a photograph of the night sky allows astronomers to count and study millions of stars at once, images returned by the IMAGE spacecraft will provide simultaneous measurements of the densities, energies and masses of charged particles throughout the inner magnetosphere using three-dimensional imaging techniques.
"IMAGE brings to space weather studies the kind of capability that geosynchronous weather satellites have brought to surface meteorology," said Dr. Thomas Moore, IMAGE Project Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. "We may soon be treated to evening news images of plasma clouds engulfing those weather satellites."
During its two-year mission, the half-ton IMAGE spacecraft will image remote particle populations in the magnetosphere. These "photographs" will then be linked together to make movies in real time. Their rapid two-minute cadence will allow detailed study of the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetosphere and the magnetosphere's response during a magnetic storm, which typically lasts a few days.
"In addition to stored data, IMAGE will implement a real-time down link that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration intends to use for space weather forecasting," said Principal Investigator Dr. James Burch of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), San Antonio, TX.
To fulfill its science goals, IMAGE will employ six state-of- the-art instruments along with a data processor. The instruments and their developers are:
IMAGE is the first of two Medium-class Explorer missions NASA has scheduled for launch. The total cost of the mission, including spacecraft, launch vehicle and mission operations for the first two years is about $154 million. The IMAGE Project Office at Goddard will manage the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science in Washington, DC, while the principal investigator at SwRI has overall responsibility for the science, instrumentation, spacecraft and data analyses.
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space of Sunnyvale, Calif. built the IMAGE spacecraft -- which measures 7.38 feet in diameter and 4.99 feet high -- under contract with SwRI. On orbit, the RPI antennas aboard IMAGE will extend 33 feet parallel to the spin axis and 820 feet in four directions perpendicular to the spin axis, making IMAGE the longest spacecraft currently on orbit.
The IMAGE mission press kit is available at:
ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/presskit/2000/image.pdf
More information about the IMAGE mission can be found at:
http://pluto.space.swri.edu/IMAGE/
and
http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov
NEWSALERT: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 @ 1210 GMT
The latest news from Astronomy Now and Spaceflight Now
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/0002/29imagedelayed/
NASA Space Science News for February 24, 2000
Space Weather Mission Nears Launch
An innovative satellite called IMAGE, slated for launch on March 15, 2000, will
revolutionize our understanding of Earth's magnFetosphere and improve space
weather forecasting.
Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space
IMAGE was built, integrated with its payload, and tested at the Missiles & Space facility in Sunnyvale. The spacecraft was developed under a subcontract with Southwest Research Institute, the principal investigator institute for the mission. IMAGE was selected by NASA to be the first Medium-class Explorer Mission. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. will manage the IMAGE mission.
"We're enormously pleased to see IMAGE on its way to launch," said Missiles & Space IMAGE program manager Dale Vaccarello. "The entire IMAGE team here feels very satisfied that three years of intense effort paid off and that the best possible spacecraft is finally on it's way to the pad."
"The hard work and dedication of the Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space team produced an on-time delivery IMAGE to the launch site, a remarkable achievement considering the program's limited budget and the number of technical problems that had to be overcome," said Bill Gibson, the Southwest Research Institute program manager. "We are particularly grateful to the Missiles & Space integration and test team for their work in integrating the complex scientific payload and executing an excellent environmental test program."
Missiles & Space was chosen in 1996 by the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) of San Antonio to build spacecraft for IMAGE. In addition, the Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space Advanced Technology (ATC) in Palo Alto was involved with the development of two of the IMAGE scientific instruments, and ATC personnel developed a star tracker used on the spacecraft for attitude determination and pointing.
Following launch, the IMAGE observatory will be inserted into a highly elliptical polar orbit. The spin-stabilized spacecraft will be oriented so that the IMAGE viewing instruments scan the Earth each spacecraft revolution. The mission will last for two years.
IMAGE will be the first mission dedicated to imaging the magnetosphere as it changes shape. IMAGE will three-dimensional imaging techniques to study the global response of the Earth's magnetosphere to in the magnetic activity of the sun. The magnetosphere is the region of space controlled by the Earth's magnetic field and populated with plasma -- a gas consisting of equal numbers of positively and negatively charged particles -- of both solar wind and ionospheric origin. Its behavior is strongly influenced by the solar wind, the supersonic stream of charged particles flowing out from the sun.
The most familiar manifestation of the magnetosphere's interaction with the solar wind are auroras -- the Northern and Southern Lights. These colorful and sometimes impressive displays result from the impact of charged particles with the gases of the Earth's upper atmosphere. Especially spectacular auroras are associated with geomagnetic storms, which are caused by disturbances in the solar wind. In addition to triggering intense auroral activity, geomagnetic storms can damage spacecraft, disrupt communications, and lead to power blackouts. It is thus important to understand such storms and be able to predict them.
IMAGE will provide the first opportunity to image magnetospheric regions on a global scale. IMAGE will use three different experimental techniques to carry out its mission: radio sounding, ultraviolet imaging, and neutral atom imaging. A radio sounder will probe the boundaries of the magnetosphere and the plasmasphere (a dense region of cold ionospheric plasma surrounding the Earth in the inner magnetosphere), while ultraviolet imagers study the aurora and the structure of the plasmasphere. Global images of magnetospheric ion populations from a suite of three neutral atom imagers will yield information about magnetospheric plasma sources and about the behavior of the inner magnetosphere under both quiet and magnetic storm conditions. The neutral atom imagers detect neutral atoms created from magnetospheric ions through a process known as charge exchange. IMAGE will be the first space science mission to employ this technique extensively over a wide range of particle energies.
Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is a leading supplier of satellites and space to military, civil government and commercial communications organizations around the world. These spacecraft and systems have enhanced military and commercial communications; provided new and timely remote-sensing information; and furnished new data for thousands of scientists studying our planet and the universe.
For more information:
Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space
IMAGE mission and its instruments
Images supporting this release
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