EISCAT_3D included in the prestigious Roadmap for European research

The radar project EISCAT_3D with its headquarters in Kiruna, Sweden, has been chosen as one of 44 important projects in the European Roadmap for Research Infrastructures. This was announced today (9 December) by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) at the European Conference on Research Infrastructures in Versailles, France. The Swedish Research Council sent in the application a year ago. Since the first round in 2006, 35 major European projects have been included in the roadmap; EISCAT_3D is thus one of nine new projects to be included.

The EISCAT Scientific Association has operated in northern Scandinavia since the 1970s and on Svalbard since the 1990s with a total of seven large radar antennae in three different radar systems. EISCAT has been used among other things to understand the solar wind's influence on the processes giving rise to the aurora, something that is important even for our local space weather. The unique 930 MHz UHF radar consists of three stations, with a sender near Tromsø in Norway and receivers in Kiruna and Sodankylä in Finland.

"The available frequency range in the 930 MHz band has shrunk owing to the incursions of mobile phone operators," says the Swedish EISCAT Council delegate Asta Pellinen-Wannberg, "so EISCAT has since 2005 been conducting an EU-financed design study for an upgrade of the radar system."

The design study is a collaborative project within EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), between EISCAT, the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF), Luleå University of Technology, Tromsø University in Norway and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Great Britain. The main advantage with the new design is the possibility of measuring at different heights simultaneously from different directions. Instead of large parabolic antennas, an earlier type of radar makes a comeback, groups of small antennas where each unit gathers in a small part of the radar waves. By phasing together the streams of data one can achieve a spatial resolution of tens of metres instead of earlier kilometre scales at 100 km altitude. At the same time one can by switch the direction of the radar beam quickly by electronic means and thus cover much greater volumes than before.

With the technology of today the group antenna system can be remote-controlled and thus placed in such a way as to optimize the observations. One or more transmitters and at least four receivers are planned for northern Scandinavia, two on a North-South base line and two on an East-West base line. The system is planned to be operating by 2013 and to have an operating life of 30 years. The total construction cost is estimated at 60-250 million Euros, money which must be sought from regional, national and international sources.

More information:
Professor Asta Pellinen-Wannberg, Umeå University and IRF, Swedish EISCAT Council delegate, tel. +46-980-79118, asta@irf.se
Docent Gudmund Wannberg, IRF, project manager for the EISCAT_3D Design Study for technical questions, tel. +46-980-79054, ugw@irf.se

Web pages:
Information about EISCAT_3D: http://www.irf.se/link/CORDIS_FP6_EISCAT_3D and http://e7.eiscat.se/groups/EISCAT_3D_info
Information about ESFRI: http://cordis.europa.eu/esfri
More about the ECRI2008 conference in Versailles: http://www.ecri2008.eu

Background
EISCAT Scientific Association is jointly owned by the research councils or equivalent organisations in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Great Britain, Germany, Japan and China. EISCAT's headquarters are in Sweden at the Space Campus in Kiruna. The nearby 32-metre parabolic antenna is a well-known landmark about 8 km East of the town. It welcomes those who arrive in Kiruna by air and by road from the South. The aim was to build up and operate an advanced scientific radar system for space- and atmospheric research in the auroral zone in northern Europe with the leading technology of the time. The system has been very successful over the years, with thousands of scientific articles published and an average (in Sweden alone) of one doctoral dissertation per year based in whole or on part on observations using EISCAT.

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Dr Rick McGregor
Research & Development Officer
Swedish Institute of Space Physics
(Institutet för rymdfysik, IRF)
Box 812 SE-981 28 Kiruna SWEDEN tel. +46-980-79178
fax +46-980-79050
mobile: +46-70-2766020
Internet: www.irf.se
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