The New Small Wheel Project for the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer

The ATLAS collaboration at LHC has chosen the large size multi-gap resistive strips Micromegas technology along with the small-strip Thin Gap Chambers (sTGC) for the high luminosity upgrade of the first muon station in the high-rapidity region, the so called New Small Wheel (NSW) project. The NSW system is currently under construction and will be installed in the ATLAS underground cavern during the LHC long shutdown 2 to enter in operation for Run-3. The construction of Micromegas and sTGC series detectors is now close to completion at the construction sites distributed all around the world. At CERN, the final validation and integration of the modules in sectors composing the wheel is well advanced. In this presentation the motivation of the NSW upgrade and the current status of the project will be reviewed, with particular focus on the main challenges, the adopted solutions and measured performance of the system.