Washington
Planetary researchers are at odds with their parent scientific society over a recommendation by a National Science Foundation advisory panel that the agency reduce and perhaps eliminate funds for the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, one of America’s best-known scientific instruments. The parent group, the American Astronomical Society, praised the panel on Tuesday and called for astronomers to form a “common front.”
Some planetary scientists argue that the telescope plays a vital role in their discipline, including its ability to track accurately asteroids capable of flying close to, or hitting, Earth, a job explicitly endorsed by Congress. However, the advisory committee, which included no planetary scientists, told the NSF in a report last month that the telescope’s scientific value was lower than that of other existing and planned scientific projects financed largely by the NSF. Cutting support for Arecibo would be a hard but necessary choice in a tight federal budget, says the report, “From the Ground Up: Balancing the NSF Astronomy Program.”
The move was one of a series of recommendations to cut $30-million or more from the NSF’s astronomy budget, which stands at $199-million this year, by 2011. To help come up with the savings, the report suggests trimming funds for Arecibo, which Cornell University has managed since 1971, by one-third, to $8-million, by 2009. The report also recommends that the observatory and NSF seek out partners, including some in other countries, to share the costs. But if none step forward, the NSF should end the financing altogether, the report says.
The NSF has said it will study the report’s recommendations over several months and hold public meetings to solicit comments, as the advisory committee did before writing its report.
“I think it likely that NSF funding for Arecibo will be reduced,” G. Wayne Van Citters, director of the NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences, said on Tuesday in an e-mail message. But, he wrote, he could not comment “on how much or on what schedule.”
The Arecibo telescope is a single giant dish of concrete built into a mountain. The dish, at 305 meters across, is the world’s largest. It has found a place in popular culture, as a set for scenes in the movies Contact and GoldenEye. Since beginning operation in 1963, the telescope has been used in several major discoveries, including the identification of the first planets outside the solar system.
The observatory’s ability to use radio waves to study planets and asteroids in our solar system is unique, wrote Guy J. Consolmagno in a letter this month to the NSF. Brother Consolmagno is chairman of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society and a scientist at the Vatican Observatory. “To decommission one of our primary tools for studying them would deal a serious blow to both our science and our safety,” he wrote.
Some planetary scientists also have a beef with the advisory committee’s finding that Arecibo’s capabilities will be surpassed by a new array of radio telescopes, the Square Kilometer Array, that is being planned by an international consortium.
But in a written statement released on Tuesday, the leadership of the astronomical society struck a different tone. It said the review panel had done an excellent job of gathering comments from astronomers. Without specifically mentioning Arecibo, it acknowledged that the recommendations, “if implemented, will cause hardship for some.” However, the statement said the society “urges our community” to work with the NSF “to present a common front as we plan for a strong future” in research.
Kevin B. Marvel, the society’s executive officer, said that the planetary scientists were free to issue their own statement, and that the full society was not attempting to disavow it.
Planetary scientists represent a minority within the society and see themselves as having historically competed for money with astronomers who study deep space, many of whom might not have fully appreciated Arecibo’s value, said Sanjay S. Limaye, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a press officer for the Division for Planetary Sciences.
However, Mr. Marvel noted that the advisory committee’s recommendations did not spare other subdisciplines within astronomy from cuts. He added that astronomers regularly rank the scientific importance of astronomical instruments across subdisciplines in order to build consensus for federal financing for all.
Regarding the advisory committee’s lack of planetary scientists, Mr. Van Citters, of the NSF, wrote, “The committee was not constituted to have a membership that covered every possible subfield of astronomy, but rather to have people with broad experience and interest who would receive and take into account input from many areas of the science.”
Closing Arecibo might not be cheap, though: The advisory committee wrote that by one estimate, the cost to decommission and disassemble the massive structures could run as high as $170-million. The report suggests, however, that the figure is not reliable and calls for further study.
Background articles from The Chronicle:
