IceCube Neutrino Observatory Upgrade

National Science Foundation
Office of Polar Programs
4201 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22230

Posted August 7, 2019

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the detector at NSF’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station that identified the first likely source of high-energy neutrinos and cosmic rays, is getting an upgrade.

On June 25, NSF approved the funding to upgrade IceCube, extending its scientific capabilities to enable IceCube to reach neutrino energies that overlap with the energy ranges of smaller existing neutrino detectors worldwide. The upgrade is expected to be carried out during the 2022-23 polar field season, in the Southern Hemisphere summer.

The upgrade will have two new types of sensor modules, which will be tested for a ten-times-larger future extension of IceCube known as IceCube-Gen2. The modules to be deployed in this first extension will be two to three times more sensitive than the sensors that make up the current detector.

Learn more from the video.