image_launch_000324 A satellite that is set to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California this Saturday will, in essence, be the world's first dedicated space weather observatory.
Scientists will soon gain the ability to spy on Earths magnetosphere in its entirety, thanks to the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration -- or IMAGE -- satellite. The NASA satellite will reveal the otherwise invisible plasma cloud of charged particles that envelops the planet. IMAGE will open a window on the full extent of influence of the planets magnetic field as it is shaped by the solar winds buffeting gusts.
"Its just going to give a totally new view of the Earth," said James Burch, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, the missions principal investigator.
The global view afforded by the octagonal satellites six instruments will likely reveal the 1 trillion cubic mile (2.56 trillion cubic kilometer) geo-space system to be far more nuanced and dynamic than currently understood, scientists said.
"Its going to be very exploratory, kind of like looking through a telescope for the first time," said Tom Moore, IMAGEs mission scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center.
The satellite is scheduled for launch aboard a Boeing Delta 2 rocket during an 8-minute window that opens at 3:35 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (20:35 GMT) on Saturday, March 25. The rocket will blast off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, taking 52 minutes to deliver the satellite into a highly elliptical, polar orbit.
Simulations of the global views IMAGE will have of Earth's magnetosphere.
The launch was originally delayed after engineers discovered electric power converters similar to those installed on the satellite failed while undergoing testing for another mission.
Frank Volpe, the IMAGE project manager, said extensive reviews have indicated the parts will not give the satellite any problems.
"They are good parts and we are on our way," Volpe said.
If the two-year, $154 million mission is a success, it will make available to scientists near-simultaneous measurements -- rendered in three dimensions -- of the densities, energies and masses of charged particles throughout the Earths inner magnetosphere.
Until now, science has been limited by the use of satellites that could only sample single points within the vast magnetosphere, which extends 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) toward the sun on its compressed side and an elongated 110,000 miles (176,000 kilometers) from Earths night side. Rather than detect particles and fields as it encounters them, IMAGE will "see" them.
"Its comparable to sitting in a building at one point during a hurricane or having a camera on a geosynchronous satellite looking down," Moore said. "Its really day and night."
IMAGE's orbit during its two-year mission to study Earth's magnetosphere.
To carry out its science, IMAGE will use ultraviolet and neutral atom imaging and radio sounding. In the first two cases, instruments will focus on neutral atoms created from magnetospheric ions in a process called charge exchange.
Scientists will also create movies using IMAGE data to show the dynamic responses of the magnetosphere to the solar wind at intervals of just two minutes. Until now, similar "movies" relied on time intervals of hours, if not days.
Rather than a smooth interface, simulations show the magnetopause -- where the magnetosphere ends --may actually have a more complex shape, Moore said.
"It has ripples, it flaps in the breeze, as it were. It just jumps all around," he said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will plug that information into its space weather forecasts, Burch said.
Space weather, a novelty until relatively recently, has garnered more and more attention for its ability to affect satellites, power grids, orbiting astronauts and telecommunications here on Earth. And the mission happens to coincide with the solar maximum, a period when the sun is most active.
The satellite weighs 1,089 pounds (494 kilograms) and stands a squat 5 feet (1.52 meters) tall with a 7.4-foot (2.25-meter) diameter.
Small as the satellite may be, its beryllium-copper wire antennas will extend a whopping 1,652 feet (502 meters) tip to tip, making IMAGE the longest artificial object in space, taller than the Empire State Building.
The mammoth antennas will sound the magnetosphere, bouncing radio waves off distant plasma clouds.
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space in Sunnyvale, California built the spacecraft. The Southwest Research Institute developed its science payload.
The mission is the first under NASAs MIDEX, or Medium-Class Explorer, mission program.
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