Renowned Arecibo Telescope Won’t Be Rebuilt– And Astronomers Are Heartbroken

After one world-famous radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico collapsed 2 years back, many scientists hoped that the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), which runs the facility, would eventually build one new one to replace it. Instead, the company has announced that it will establish one educational center for science, technology, engineering, and also maths (STEM) at the site. The revised plan could ramp down or dramatically alter the remaining study being done at Arecibo.

“It’s heartbreaking,” states Héctor Arce, an astronomer at Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, that is from Puerto Rico and also has worked on Arecibo advocacy efforts. “To many, it appears like yet another unjust way of treating the colonial territory of Puerto Rico.”

The NSF states that it is following community recommendations in not planning to rebuild the large telescope and instead establishing the new educational center. “We are not closing Arecibo,” states Sean Jones, head of the NSF’s directorate of mathematical and physical sciences. “We think this new approach and the new center will certainly be catalytic in many regions.”

The agency announced its plans in one call for proposals on 13th October. It requests suggestions for setting up and running one educational center at Arecibo, at the cost of US$ one million to $3 million per year over 5 years, beginning in 2023. That money might or might not include funds to run research facilities at Arecibo still in use, such as a 12-meter radio antenna and a lidar system that uses lasers to study Earth’s atmosphere.

The situation “could be worse,” states Abel Méndez, a planetary astronomer at the College of Puerto Rico at Arecibo who uses the 12-meter antenna for research and teaching. But “it would be much, much better.”

“It is devastating to understand that that’s their ultimate decision,” says Desirée Cotto-Figueroa, one astronomer at the College of Puerto Rico at Humacao. “Especially despite all the efforts made by the staff and also scientists of the Arecibo Observatory and also by the general scientific community to keep it functioning as the research center of excellence that it has often been with the observing facilities that are left.”

A powerhouse of education

One major issue is how the Arecibo site will draw students and also teachers if there is a little active research study to participate in. “Yet the NSF calls for proposals for one world-class educational institution,” states Anne Virkki, one planetary scientist at the College of Helsinki in Finland. “How does anyone do that without the world-class researchers, engineers, and instruments?”

The NSF states that it is asking for precisely those sorts of ideas. The new center could support ongoing work in astronomy and planetary science, or it can focus on other areas, like the biological sciences, states James L. Moore III, the head of the NSF’s education and also human resources directorate. “Here’s one opportunity to reimagine what the possibilities could be,” he says.

Arecibo Observatory has long been one powerhouse of STEM education in Puerto Rico because of its renowned telescope and also place in the astronomical background. Students trained there have gone on to become professional astronomers and also planetary scientists in many countries.

The 305-meter-wide radio telescope that collapsed in 2020 played a crucial role in many scientific fields for more than half one century, including the search for extraterrestrial life, the discovery of the 1st extrasolar planets and of gravitational waves, and the study of near-Earth asteroids and of quick radio bursts.

The NSF has operated the observatory since the 1970s, functioning with one series of contractors. It has been trying to wind down tools at Arecibo since 2006 to shift funding to newer astronomical facilities. Advocates rallied, and research continued; however, the observatory faced fresh difficulties in 2017, when Hurricane Maria damaged much of the facility, and also in early 2020, when one series of earthquakes caused more damage.

Then came the collapse of the 305-meter dish. One of its key supporting cables failed in August 2020, then another in November of that year, and also the NSF decided it was too structurally unsound to repair. One engineering investigation revealed 5 factors that contributed to the collapse, including the design of the cable system, deferred maintenance, and also damage from hurricanes and earthquakes.

An observatory no more

The research has continued at the smaller facilities at Arecibo Observatory. Presently funded projects using those facilities will be able to finish up, Jones says, and scientists can propose to continue their usage under the scope of the new educational center.

The lidar facilities include one potassium laser that studies the temperature of layers in Globe’s atmosphere and a planned, current instrument to probe aerosols such as atmospheric dust. The 12-meter antenna serves as a node in a long-distance astronomical network operated by European astronomers. Other research projects that utilize it include Méndez’s studies of red dwarf stars and the habitability of planets around them.

Many who work with Arecibo instruments are currently scrambling to figure out how to ramp down their research projects. Under the current plan, the site will no longer be called Arecibo Observatory– becoming the Arecibo Center for STEM Education and Research instead.

Read the original article on Nature.