About Project EISCAT 3D

EISCAT_3D is a new international research radar promising a step-change in understanding the effect of solar storms and space weather on the upper atmosphere in the Arctic, including the magnificent Northern Lights. At a total cost of 620 million Norwegian crowns, the EISCAT_3D facility will be distributed across three sites in Northern Scandinavia - in Skibotn, Norway, near Kiruna in Sweden, and near Kaaresuvanto in Finland. Each site will consist of about 10.000 antennas fed by a powerful 5 MW transmitter at Skibotn and a receiver at each of the three sites. The EISCAT_3D project started in September 2017 with site preparations occurring in summer 2018. The radar is expected to be operational in 2023. The Norwegian Investment is 228 million Norwegian crowns.

The EISCAT_3D incoherent scatter radar will be the world’s leading facility of its kind offering a critically important window to the upper atmosphere and the near-Earth space in the European Arctic. The EISCAT_3D radar will be built by the EISCAT Scientific Association, primarily comprising research councils and national institutes from Finland, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Japan and China, with additional members from other countries. EISCAT_3D is the culmination of a 10-year design and preparation phase, supported by the European Union. The selected design is a sophisticated phased-array radar which brings together new capabilities never before combined in a single radar. As the radar’s name suggests, a key capability is to measure a 3-D volume of the upper atmosphere, in unprecedented detail. This is necessary to understand how energetic particles and electrical currents from space affect both the upper and the lower atmosphere as well as man-made technology such as satellites and power grids on the ground.

The Norwegian EISCAT_3D project board

The members of the Project Board EISCAT_3D Norway are: