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The IMAGE spacecraft was launched from Vandenberg AFB on March
25, 2000, at 20:34:43 UTC. IMAGE is the first satellite mission
dedicated to imaging the Earth's magnetosphere, the region of
space ... controlled by the Earth's magnetic field and containing
extremely tenuous plasmas of both solar and terrestrial
origin. Invisible to standard astronomical observing techniques,
these populations of ions and electrons have traditionally been
studied by means of localized measurements with charged particle
detectors, magnetometers, and electric field
instruments. Instead of such in-situ measurements, IMAGE employs
a variety of imaging techniques to "see the invisible" and to
produce the first comprehensive global images of the plasma
populations in the inner magnetosphere. With these images, space
scientists are able to observe, in a way never before possible,
the large-scale dynamics of the magnetosphere and the
interactions among its constituent plasma populations.

Additional information available at
http://pluto.space.swri.edu/IMAGE/

http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/