The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, also known as HAARP is to be transferred from military operation to “civillian control”, as the site is handed over to the University of Alaska, which will continue to use the mysterious facility for experiments.

“The Air Force Research Lab has control of the HAARP facility until Aug. 11,” Marmian Grimes, a university of Alaska spokesperson, wrote in an email to The Intercept.

“After that, the university will have access to the site under the terms of an agreement between [University of Alaska Fairbanks] and the Air Force. That agreement allows access for two years, which will provide the university and the Air Force time to negotiate an agreement regarding the transfer of the land.”

HAARP was officially constructed with the stated goal of studying the ionosphere. It is made up of a huge array of radio transmitters and antennas, which generate radio waves to heat up portions of the ionosphere, the region of Earth’s upper atmosphere, from about 60 km (37 mi) to 1,000 km (620 mi) altitude, which is ionized by solar radiation.

The heat accelerates electrons, creating conditions for military scientists to conduct experiments.

The facility has long been the subject of intense scrutiny among those who believe the Pentagon constructed and used it to conduct research into everything from weather and natural phenomenon manipulation weapons to more esoteric studies, such as electronic and psychotronic mind control.

Don’t let anyone tell you.. ..this is WaterVapour!! Chemtrails Haarp WeatherModification Geoengineering ClimateChange pic.twitter.com/cMirIWj3gS

— Mark Steer (@SteerMark) July 10, 2015

@CAchemtrails Are those all chemtrails do you think?

— Laura Babeliowsky (@laurababel) July 14, 2015

As the Intercept report notes, the Pentagon ploughed millions into the facility, mostly via congressional add-ons, and was still doing so as recently as 2007, when HAARP was officially completed.

It consequently seemed dubious to many that just seven years later an announcement came that the Air Force was set to close the site and dismantle the array.

Now it has been revealed that HAARP will live on. The Intercept notes:

“Physicist Dennis Papadopoulos, a professor at the University of Maryland and longtime proponent of HAARP, said the agreement that was worked out would transfer the facility from the Defense Department to the state of Alaska, and then over to the University of Alaska, which has long been involved in research at the site.”

HAARP will then operate, like other ionosphere research sites, as a scientific facility supported by those conducting experiments there. Papadopoulos said that the state of Alaska will put in about $2 million, and some additional funding may come from the National Science Foundation and the Pentagon.

So the facility will likely STILL be funded by the government, and experiments will continue to be conducted there.

This inevitably means that the theories over what HAARP is really used for will not go away, and researchers will continue to be fascinated with the mysterious facility.

Steve Watson is a London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.