UAF took ownership of the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program facility in Gakona from the Air Force last summer, and there’s optimism that the station, once destined for scrap, has a future.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute is tasked with revitalizing HAARP as a tool for conducting experiments in the earth’s ionosphere. Though the Air Force has completed its HAARP mission, institute director Robert McCoy stresses that the 25-year-old facility on the Tok Off remains the best of 4 ionospheric research stations in the world.
”It was started in ’89, but the final push was only a few years ago so it’s actually fairly new,” McCoy said. “And by a factor of ten it’s more powerful than the other ones around the world. It’s far more flexible than the other ones, so we just gotta get the word out.”
HAARP’s high power radio transmitter and antennas are used to stimulate the ionosphere for communications research and other work. McCoy said that could include testing over-the-horizon radar.
”What HAARP is a big HAM radio,” McCoy said. “And over-the-horizon radios, that’s what they are. Basically big HF (High Frequency) transmitters. So HAARP is flexible enough where the beam can be steered and it can be used in that mode. So we don’t want to use it as an over-the-horizon radar, but we’re talking to NORAD and NORTHCOM about an over-the-horizon test bed. And the problem is up here in the Arctic, the Aurora causes such problems. But HAARP has enough power to overcome the aurora.”
McCoy said that just one of the research possibilities federal agencies have expressed interest in conducting at the HAARP facility.
“The Department of Energy, the Naval Research Lab, DARPA,” McCoy listed. “The National Science Foundation has also come to us and wants to work with us.”
McCoy said the university is still awaiting permits and acquisition of the land the facility sits on in anticipation of demonstrating HAARP’s potential for customers next February. He said UAF has focused on making the $300 million former Navy and Air Force research facility more efficient by combining operations with the university run Poker Flat Rocket Range outside Fairbanks.
”We have a team at Poker costs way down,” McCoy said. “So now we have a smaller team at HAARP. We’ve combined them. As far as the science team, there used to be five people back in DC who would come out to run experiments. Our faculty on the seventh floor of the LV building of space physics, they can now run those experiments. So they’re doing research and they only have to be called on for a short time. So we’ve got those costs way down.”
McCoy said with other measures, like better insulating HAARP buildings, UAF hopes to cut yearly operating costs from $7 million, down to $2 million. The University of Alaska has given the GI 3 years to repay a $2 million start-up loan.
