Six US telescopes face possible closure

Nature : In an effort to cut costs and be able to support future projects, NSF has proposed divesting itself of some of its major assets, including six telescopes: four on Kitt Peak in Arizona, the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, and the Very Long Baseline Array, a collection of 10 dishes in various locations. The US currently spends $20 million to keep those facilities running. Instead, NSF would support two future telescopes in Chile, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and the Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope. Finding other operators for the six telescopes is going to be difficult as many small and state-funded universities are suffering some of the same budgetary woes as the government. Before making its recommendations, the portfolio-review panel worked out different budget scenarios in an effort to anticipate the future economy. “Predicting budgets is harder than predicting the future of the Universe,” said Michael Turner, director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago.