Arecibo Observatory faces conflict between private and public funding

Scientific American : With the recent launch of Breakthrough Listen —the privately funded, large-scale search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI—the governing committee of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has been confronted with a problem: If the committee decides to partner with Breakthrough Listen and accept funding from Yuri Milner’s $100 million initiative, Arecibo, the world’s largest and most sensitive single-dish radio telescope, could risk losing its financial support from NSF, the US federal agency that owns it. Budget cuts have forced NSF to start divesting from older facilities in order to fund newer ones. Although funding from Breakthrough Listen would help to keep the facility running, it would not cover all the expenses, such as Arecibo’s basic operational costs. Whether NSF will continue to contribute to Arecibo’s maintenance, however, depends on the details of the proposed partnership, which have yet to be provided to NSF by Arecibo’s management, and on how such a partnership would affect NSF’s broader mission regarding use of the telescope.