EISCAT (European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association) operates three incoherent scatter radar systems, at 224 MHz, 931 MHz in Northern Scandinavia and one at 500 MHz on Svalbard, used to study the interaction between the Sun and the Earth as revealed by disturbances in the ionosphere and magnetosphere. At the Ramfjordmoen facility (near Tromsø, Norway), it also operates an ionospheric heater facility, similar to HAARP. Additional receiver stations are located in Sodankylä, Finland, and Kiruna, Sweden. The EISCAT Svalbard radar (ESR) is located in Longyearbyen, Norway. The EISCAT Headquarters are also located in Kiruna.
EISCAT is funded and operated by research institutes and research councils of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Japan, China and the United Kingdom (the EISCAT Associates). Institutes in other countries also contribute to operations, including Russia, Ukraine, Germany and South Korea.
The system was also tested for space debris tracking and the radars were proven to be capable of statistical observations of Low-Earth orbit (LEO) debris (altitudes of 500 to 1500 km) down to 2 cm in size. Since these measurements are insufficient to determine complete orbits, the radar has only limited space surveillance value. Because the space debris tracking change is only a dedicated back-end computer system, the primary EISCAT observations are not compromised. As a result of that, the EISCAT radars allow continuous monitoring of the LEO debris in a beam park mode, functioning as a space surveillance system part of the European Space Agency's Space Situational Awareness Programme (SSA).