The very first area of study for the Canadian Space Science Program was of the aurora borealis with the atmospheric studies satellite Alouette. Since Alouette's launch, Canada has continued to lead the world in high technology imagers to study phenomena in the magnetosphere like the aurora borealis and aurora australis. Canada provided such an imager for the Swedish Scientific Satellite Freja in 1992. These imagers measure the direction, the energy, and the type of particles bombarding the Earth.