Scanning Doppler Imager (SDI)

The contract is for the purchase and delivery of a scanning Doppler imager (SDI) measuring neutral winds and temperatures in the thermosphere, to be installed in Southern Finland.

The contract is procured through direct award. The legal basis of the direct award contract is provided by section 40 (2 and 5) of the Act on Public Procurement and Concession Contracts 1397/2016 Contracting authorities may award public contract by direct award if: 2) only a certain supplier can implement the procurement for a technical reason, or for a reason related to protecting an exclusive right; it shall be a further condition that there are no reasonable alternatives or substitute solutions, and that the absence of competition is not due to an artificial narrowing of the terms and conditions of the procurement; The SDI will serve as a key data source for the work to be conducted under our grant funded by the European Research Council. In order to fulfil the ambitious goals of the research plan the instrument shall have the following capabilities: 1. The instrument should be composed of a capacitance-stabilised etalon capable of piezoelectric separation maintaining both plates perfectly parallel to each other and scanning at 10 Hz or faster, a low-light imaging detector capable of sampling at the etalon gap scanning frequency and synchronised with the scan, and wide-angle fore-optics arranged to place a sharp image of the sky onto the detector. 2. Laser calibration, with a He-Ne frequency-stabilised laser at 633 nm wave-length, or equivalent system, is critical to ensure the needed accuracy of the measurements. 3. Furthermore, the instrument should be able to resolve the sky scene into a software-defined set of sub-regions and compile a high-resolution Doppler spectrum of the source illumination originating from each one. These spectra should span a wavelength interval of around 10 pm. We foresee getting a SDI field-of-view divided into > 100 sub-regions and extending from the zenith down to about 25 to 30 degree elevation angles. 4. The instrument will provide 2D observations around its installation site in Southern Finland, enabling the retrieval of neutral winds and neutral temperatures within a wide field of view (above elevation angles 25–30°), partly overlapping (at least for the red-line observations) that of a similar infrastructure installed in northern Fennoscandia called SDI-3D. Based on the market survey conducted by the FMI during Dec–Jan 2025, only UAF has reported about its competence to build the instrument according to the requirements given above. 5) the goods to be procured are manufactured only for research, testing, product development or scientific purposes, and the procurement does not concern mass production to ensure the financial viability of goods manufacturing or to cover the costs of research and development; SDIs do not enable any direct commercial applications and are solely developed to carry out research in atmospheric and space physics. SDIs are highly specific instruments which are only manufactured upon request and by extremely few possible providers. They require extensive design development and include very rare parts (especially an etalon), making them unsuitable for mass production. A contracting entity may make a direct procurement when a procurement of goods to be made from an original supplier is an additional order that has been placed in order to partially replace or expand a previous delivery or installation. It shall be a condition that a change of supplier would result in procuring goods with different technical characteristics, causing incompatibility or disproportionately great technical difficulties in operation and maintenance. The duration of such agreements and renewable agreements may only exceed three years in exceptional circumstances.