Solutions

Mission

IMAGE (Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration) is a NASA Medium Explorers 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.

OIP’s Participation

OIP, as subcontractor to Centre Spatial de Liège (CSL) [B], was responsible for the design and development of the Back-Imager part of the Spectrograph Imager (SI) which is one of the far UV instruments on the spacecraft deckplate.

Status

IMAGE was launched March 25, 2000 by a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg AFB on a two-year mission. Almost six years later, it unexpectedly ceased operations in December 2005 during its extended mission and was declared lost.

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 February 25, contact with IMAGE was again lost only to be reestablished on March 4, 2018. The signal disappeared once again on August 5, 2018. Recovery efforts are underway and if successful NASA may decide to fund a restarted mission