Alaska’s controversial HAARP facility closed - will it come back online?
Source: alaskadispatch.com
Alaska’s High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) has drawn its fair share of conspiracy theories over the years, as it sits in Gakona, an array of antennas intended to heat the Earth’s ionosphere and study the effects. Fringe thinkers have tenuously linked HAARP to everything from the 2011 Japanese Earthquake to mind control and hurricanes.But if there are no major earthquakes or bizarre global weather events in the coming weeks or months, the folks at HAARP may have some explaining to do -- the facility has apparently been shuttered since June, the power turned off as HAARP waits for a hoped-for change in contractors to operate the facility.
HAARP is a government-owned facility, primarily overseen by the U.S. Air Force, though the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funds a number of grant projects there. The project was previously managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, but is currently overseen by a research unit at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M. after the Hanscom unit was moved in 2011.
The closure was first reported by the Amateur Radio Relay League on Monday. An article there quoted Dr. James Keeney, who now helps manage the HAARP project at Kirtland Air Force Base, as saying “Currently the site is abandoned. It comes down to money. We don’t have any.”
Dr. Keeney, reached by phone Wednesday morning, would not comment further for this story. Researchers with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a frequent collaborator on HAARP studies, were able to independently confirm that the facility was indeed closed -- the power and internet are currently off and the facility is unmanned.
The HAARP website was also offline as of Wednesday.
The shutdown is reported to be only a temporary one, with the facility having been shuttered sometime between late May and mid-June.
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Read the full article at: alaskadispatch.com
