Jan 20 2006
From The Space Library
NASA announced that its Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) satellite had ceased operations after a successful six-year mission. IMAGE had enabled researchers to study the global structure and dynamics of Earth’s inner magnetosphere (the area of space around Earth that is controlled by Earth’s magnetic field), as it responded to energy from solar winds. According to Barbara L. Giles, IMAGE Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters, “The IMAGE mission showed us space around the Earth is anything but empty, and that plasma clouds can be imaged and tracked just as we do from space for Earth’s surface weather.” The satellite had launched on 25 March 2000 and had provided data until December 2005, when its power supply subsystems had failed.
NASA, “Magnetospheres,” http://nasascience.nasa.gov/heliophysics/magnetosphere-ionosphere (accessed 7 December 2009); NASA, “NASA Magnetic Field Mission Ends,” news release 06-030, 20 January 2006, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/jan/HQ_06030_IMAGE_quits.html (accessed 14 September 2009).
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