RECENT RESULTS FROM THE IMAGE MISSION

摘要

The IMAGE satellite was launched on March 25, 2000 into an elliptical polar orbit with apogee of 8.2 Earth radii (geocentric) over the north pole. With this satellite, magnetospheric plasmas are imaged using ultraviolet, energetic neutral atom, and radio plasma imaging techniques. During the first 1.5 years of the mission, IMAGE has obtained new results on the global dynamics of magnetospheric plasmas, including ring current injection and loss, substorm injections, plasmasphere loss and refilling, both subauroral and cusp-region proton auroras, the generation of kilometric continuum radiation, the field-aligned distribution of total plasma density and the global outflow of plasma from the ionosphere. In this paper, some of the new results from IMAGE are presented, and their importance for space weather is assessed.