Florida university takes lead in running Arecibo Observatory

Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, home to the famous 305-meter-diameter radio astronomy dish and the world’s largest radar, is getting new management.

A consortium headed by the University of Central Florida (UCF) will take the reins from SRI International, the Universities Space Research Association, and Universidad Metropolitana (UMET) in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which has run NSF’s 54-year-old observatory since 2011. UCF’s partners are Florida-based Yang Enterprises, which will oversee the observatory’s maintenance and operations, and UMET, which plans to continue and strengthen public outreach and education.

The announcement , made by NSF on 22 February, removes a cloud of uncertainty about the facility’s future. The transition began immediately and is slated to go into full effect on 1 April.

Over the next five years, NSF will reduce its annual funding for Arecibo from $8 million to $2 million. NASA, which uses the dish to keep an eye out for near-Earth asteroids, is expected to continue chipping in $3.8 million a year.

Just how the UCF-led group will make up the funding gap is unclear. “Our conservative estimate is that we need to bring in $3 million to $4 million a year by year five,” says Ray Lugo, director of UCF’s Florida Space Institute and leader of the new management team. To that end, he says, “we are working with agencies like DOD [the US Department of Defense]. They can put a lot of zeroes behind a number faster than anyone else.”

Other potential revenue streams, Lugo says, include a “pay to observe” mode for companies, the sale of telescope time to projects such as the pulsar-monitoring NANOGrav (see Physics Today, July 2017, page 26 ), and even tourism. “We want to increase the diversity of science research, bring in new users, and stabilize long-term funding,” he says.

The new contract “means that scientific and educational operations will continue, and NSF makes a reduced contribution to the partnership,” says Richard Green, director of NSF’s division of astronomical sciences. The agency hopes to make a similar arrangement to keep the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia operational.

Arecibo’s future came into question with a 2006 user community study that left NSF torn between funding it and other older facilities versus investing in new projects (see Physics Today, December 2006, page 32 ). “NSF was giving indications that they wanted to close Arecibo,” says Tony van Eyken, a radar specialist at SRI International and part of the outgoing management team. “This is a very good outcome for the observatory. I fully expect cutting-edge planetary science, upper atmospheric studies, and traditional radio astronomy to continue. The future is as bright as it’s ever been.”

The broader Arecibo user community is pleased that the observatory is being kept open. But there are unresolved questions. Will sufficient open-skies time remain available for scientific users? How will time be allocated? Will the new management raise enough funding to maximize use of the telescope? And how long will NSF keep a hand in the project?

The most immediate question concerns the Arecibo employees, who are being laid off as of 31 March and have to reapply for their positions. According to Brett Isham, a Puerto Rico–based ionospheric scientist, some key positions have yet to be advertised. The “lack of forethought is resulting in an unnecessarily chaotic transition,” he says.

UCF doesn’t have expertise in Arecibo’s science specialties, which creates some additional uncertainty. “The impact of this new management contract and the funding level on user access and science capabilities is difficult to predict,” says Jean-Luc Margot, a planetary scientist at UCLA and longtime user of the Arecibo radar. But Maura McLaughlin, an astrophysicist at West Virginia University and chair of the NANOGrav project, notes that the new team seems “committed to continuing to support astronomy at the observatory.” UMET’s chancellor, Carlos Padin, says that having a university lead the team will form “a more natural bridge” to encourage students from Puerto Rico to go into STEM fields.

Arecibo suffered damage from Hurricane Maria last September. The line feed for the 430 MHz incoherent scatter radar was destroyed; the ionospheric heater was damaged; the dish was punctured and thrown out of alignment; and generators, pumps, and other infrastructure were broken. “It’s a lot of little things,” says Lugo. Congress approved $16.3 million for repairs to Arecibo and for the 25-meter radio antenna on the island of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands, which is part of the Very Long Baseline Array. Arecibo Observatory has been running at reduced capacity since December.