This Volume I of the ISO Handbook tries to give the necessary background information to users of ISO Data, especially newcomers, on the ISO Mission and the way in which it was organised, the spacecraft operations and its in-orbit performance as well as on the data products which resulted from the scientific programme and how they can be retrieved from the ISO Data Archive.
Chapter 1 gives an introduction to the ISO, its legacy, references, acknowledgement statements and further ISO support. In Chapter 2, the general organisation of the ISO project is presented. Chapter 3 addresses the satellite design including a description of the Service Module and of the Payload Module components. Chapter 4 summarizes the key elements of the operations, including a description of the ground segment and of the ISO observing cycle, and it also gives an overview of the scientific programme and of the satellite/instrument observing modes. The in-orbit performance is described in Chapter 5. The ISO results are cross-calibrated with respect to other airborne and space missions in Chapter 6. Finally, a description of the ISO Data Archive is presented in Chapter 7, where we include an overview of its contents as well as some general guidelines on how to use it.
In the Appendix we give a general introduction to infrared astronomy and provide a list of all scientific programmes of ISO and of the observed solar system objects. We also give some technical information on the data products generated by the satellite and details on the contents of the ISO Data Archive. The section on the quaternions explains how the ISO pointing was calculated. Finally, a few SQL-query examples are provided showing that they can be a very powerful way of accessing all data in the ISO Data Archive.