The CANOPUS instrument array has been in continuous operation since the late 1980s, with project management and financial support provided by the CSA. The original Principal Investigator was A. Vallance Jones, who was succeeded by G. Rostoker (1991-1999) and finally J. Samson (1999-2003). Many aspects of the history of this program are reflected in proposals, papers, and technical documents staged on the CGSM documents web page.

In 2003, the CSA approved a plan by the Canadian space science community to bring together all major Canadian ground-based space science programs under one programmatic umbrella. This new program is called Canadian GeoSpace Monitoring (CGSM). While CGSM incorporates all of the instruments that were operated under CANOPUS, it is much more. The CGSM instrument network is comprised of Canadian SuperDARN, the CADI digisonde array, the CANOPUS and CANMOS magnetometers, the CANOPUS Meridian Scanning Photometers (MSPs), the CANOPUS riometer array, and the NORSTAR All Sky Imager (ASI) array. The overall program is described on our program elements webpage.

This new program brings with it a new management scheme. In previous years, the CANOPUS program was centrally managed by the CSA in Ottawa, with a PI and science team in the University community. Under CGSM, the PI of the CARISMA magnetometer network is Ian Mann at the University of Alberta. The CANOPUS MSPs and riometers are now part of the NORSTAR optical & riometry program. Eric Donovan of the University of Calgary is the PI of NORSTAR.

CGSM is an ambitous program, and involves significant changes to how ground-based science in Canada will be carried out. Our objective is to create an integrated program that provides synoptic data of high scientific vale. We will enhance the value of real-time geospace data in the Canadian sector. We will facilitate new and exciting science. While there will undoubtedly be some "hiccups" during the transition, we hope they are minimal and apologize in advance for any inconvenience this leads to.

At the present time (July 2006), we have accomplished the following -