The Institute for Space Research at the University of Calgary will lead the development of the Enhanced Polar Outflow Probe (e-POP), a scientific payload for CASSIOPE, the first, made-in-Canada multi-purpose small satellite mission.

The e-POP payload will be carried by CASSIOPE into a polar orbit. Once launched into orbit in early 2007, e-POP's eight scientific instruments will collect new data on space storms and associated plasma outflows in the upper atmosphere and their potentially devastating impacts on radio communications, GPS navigation, and other space-based technologies. Space storms (also called solar storms because these disturbances originate from the sun) generate huge electrical currents in the upper atmosphere's polar regions. The solar storms also produce the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights.

The CASSIOPE mission marks a new generation of smaller, cost-effective satellites. CASSIOPE has both a scientific and a commercial objective: It will provide scientists with unprecedented details about potentially dangerous space weather - such as the solar storms that smacked the Earth's atmosphere in the fall of 2003 - as well as demonstrate a new digital communications 'courier' service.

The e-POP project is a key project within the CSA's space science program and involves contributions from 10 Canadian universities and research organizations.

The e-POP project is funded by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

CSA is funding the development and operation of the e-POP payload.

NSERC is funding the coordinated ground observations and associated theoretical modeling and data assimilation in e-POP.