EISCAT 3D Norway

EISCAT 3D Norway

E3D is a world-class radar facility for investigations of the geospace environment. E3D will use the incoherent scattering (IS) technique to make 3-dimensional vector measurements across a wide field of view of key parameters in the auroral atmosphere by taking advantage of technological advances in radio, radar, computing, and signal analysis.

 

The Project
The EISCAT_3D Norway project is funded by the Research Council of Norway (Contract no 245683) to facilitate participation in the EISCAT_3D international research infrastructure project. In 2008 EISCAT_3D was selected as infrastructure for environmental research for the European Commission ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) roadmap. The EISCAT_3D phased-array radar system will be operated by, and will be an integral part of the international EISCAT Scientific Association that is currently operated with participation from China, Finland, Japan, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom

The Norwegian Research Council will fund the infrastructure with 288 MNOK where 228 MNOK is for investments and 60 MNOK is for the Norwegian share of operational costs until 2024.

The Infrastructure
E3D will be a new instrument emerging from the present EISCAT infrastructure. E3D will be the most advanced Incoherent Scatter radar endowed with two unique innovations: (1) 3-dimensional vector imaging and (2) arbitrary transmitter modulation capabilities. The first is made possible by the multi-site configuration with one active site and four passive sites and by electronic scanning and beam-forming capabilities provided by the five phased steered array antennas with about 10,000 antenna elements each. The active site will be equipped with smaller outlying antenna arrays that will provide aperture synthesis imaging to acquire sub-beam spatial transverse resolution, only partly matched by the Jicamarca radar in Peru. After full implementation, the active array's peak transmitter power will be unsurpassed at 10 MW and high duty cycle at 233 MHz. The combination of the antenna gain and the transmitter power will improve the monostatic sensitivity by a factor greater than 20 (with respect to EISCAT's UHF radar).

The E3D Norwegian site will be located in Skibotn.

Science Case

EISCAT_3D will be a world-leading international research infrastructure using the incoherent scatter technique to study the atmosphere in the Fenno-Scandinavian Arctic and to investigate how the Earth's atmosphere is coupled to space. The scientific applications also include climate change, space weather, plasma physics, space debris and near-Earth object studies. For their research with EISCAT_3D, the Norwegian EISCAT user community has identified five fundamental science questions:

  • How to proceed beyond the present simplistic, static, stationary and homogeneous analysis of upper atmospheric and ionospheric processes?
  • How does space weather affect ionospheric processes and how to support modelling and space weather services?
  • How to advance fundamental plasma physics by employing the ionosphere as a natural plasma physics laboratory?
  • How does the influx of extraterrestrial material interact with the upper atmosphere and where does the material originate from?
  • How does solar activity couple from geospace into the lower atmosphere and climate system, and does this energy change the wave forcing of geospace from below?

Consortium Members EISCAT_3D Norway

The Norwegian research consortium consists of:

  • University of Tromsø (UiT)
  • University of Bergen (UiB)
  • University Center in Svalbard (UNIS)
  • University of Oslo (UiO)
  • Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
  • Andøya Space Center

Prof. Ingrid Mann, UiT is leading the consortium.

 

 


News

Updates on the status of EISCAT facilities can be found at: EISCAT Status

05 February, 2024, Abstract Submission for the EISCAT Symposium 2024 is Open, Link: EISCAT Symposium 2024

16 February, 2023, News Article from Forskning.no, Link: Article

News Article from iTromsø, Link: Article

16 September, 2022, News Article from UiT, Link: Article

The EISCAT Symposium will be held on August 15-19, 2022, in central Sweden.  For more Information, please visit: https://www.space.irfu.se/workshops/LPMR-EISCAT/

10 May, 2022, EISCAT_3D Norway meeting, on-line.

6 December, 2021, annual EISCAT_3D Norway meeting, on-line.

17 August 2021, A new EISCAT director has been selected. Welcome Dr. Axel Steuwer!  EISCAT Article

15 June 2021, 13th EISCAT 3D User Meeting, online.  Program .

5 March 2021, EISCAT 3D User meeting, on-line. Please see an announcement.

27-28 January, 3rd EISCAT_3D Technical review.

2 December 2020, annual EISCAT_3D Norway meeting, on-line.

25-27 November 2020, EISCAT Council meeting, on-line.

26-26 October 2020, EISCAT AFC meeting, on-line.

3 - 4 June 2020, EISCAT Council meeting, on-line.

20 -22 April 2020, EISCAT AFC meeting, on-line.

24-25 March 2020 (Canceled), EISCAT SAC Meeting in Longyearbyen, Svalbard

27.-28. November 2019, Oslo, Norway, EISCAT Council Meeting

8.-9. October 2019, Tromsø, Norway, EISCAT Administration and Finance Committee

23.-24. August 2019, Oulu, Finland, EISCAT Science Advisory Committee

August 6, 2019, Oslo, Norway, EISCAT_3D Norway Project Board

11.-12. June 2019, Tokyo, Japan, EISCAT Council Meeting

21 - 22 May 2019 , EISCAT_3D user Meeting  in Uppsala, Special Topics as well asg eneral EISCAT and E3D Science: New results and future plans. Future of the Heating facility and the ESR, general EISCAT and E3D Science: New results and future plans. Registration deadline 26 April

16. April 2019, Heathrow, UK, EISCAT Administration and Finance Committee

26.-27. February 2019, Beijing, China, EISCAT Science Advisory Committee

31 January 2019 Second EISCAT_3D Technical review, Stockholm

19 October 2018: EISCAT_3D & FRISK meeting nr. 10 ”Grand Challenge Initiative – Mesosphere project”?

19 June 2018 First EISCAT_3D Technical review, London.

18 Juli 2018: Visit from the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) to Tromsø.

30 May 2018: MoU was signed between China Research Institute of Radio-wave Propagation (CRIRP) and EISCAT Scientific Association (EISCAT).

25 May 2018: A delegation from China Electronics Technology Group (CETC) and China Research Institute of Radiowave Propagation (CRIRP) visited UiT and the EISCAT site near Tromsø to discuss the EISCAT_3D project.

2 March 2018: Meeting at UiT campus in Tromsø with RCN, UiT and EISCAT to discuss the EISCAT_3D project implementation and collaboration during the construction phase.

1 December 2017: A delegation from EISCAT visited Beijing to discuss the possible collaboration between EISCAT_3D and the International Meridian Circle Program (IMCP) and an investment by CRIRP in EISCAT_3D.

7 September 2017: The opening event for the construction of the first stage of the EISCAT_3D system took place at UiT in Tromsø and in Storfjord .

EISCAT_3D - now starts the construction of the new million facility  , News 02.09.2017

Strengthens space research at UiT , News 13.06.2017

7 June 2017: EISCAT Council agrees to start the construction of EISCAT_3D on 1
September 2017 and to have the radar
operational in 2021.

Consortium meeting 7.10.16 Tromsø