Management adjustments at Arecibo additionally signaled that the observatory nonetheless had a future. In 2011, SRI International—the storied nonprofit analysis group that developed the primary laptop mouse, inkjet printing, and the voice assistant Siri—grew to become the observatory’s supervisor, sharing these duties with two different organizations, together with the Universidad Metropolitana in San Juan. Until this association, a Puerto Rican group had by no means formally been part of the observatory’s oversight.
While SRI was doing its utmost to maintain Arecibo related, nevertheless, the NSF was, within the title of due diligence, actively undermining it. It revealed a 300-page report that laid out the price of eradicating the observatory and restoring the positioning to its earlier state, a requirement if the ability needed to be decommissioned. To the observatory’s supporters, the prices of decommissioning have been being intentionally and severely underestimated, a approach of rendering this determination extra palatable.
The NSF additionally introduced that the following administration group must settle for a funds that may shrink even additional, to simply $2 million a 12 months by 2022. In the autumn of 2015, the observatory’s director, Robert Kerr, a longtime champion of the ability, give up after falling out with each the NSF and SRI. Perhaps unsurprisingly, SRI didn’t apply to resume its contract when it expired.
And so, in the summertime of 2017—by which level I had change into a veteran of quite a few committees—I headed as soon as extra to Washington, to sit down round a desk 1,500 miles from the coquís and focus on in dispassionate phrases the dismal way forward for a spot I love. This time I got here residence feeling optimistic. The University of Central Florida, an sudden candidate to handle the observatory, had made a probably game-changing bid. The college would successfully flip Arecibo right into a Florida-owned facility, making the state accountable for protecting the observatory’s operations and upkeep prices.
It was dangerous, as a result of the college had no expertise managing an observatory the scale of Arecibo, and no actual custom of radio astronomy analysis. More importantly, the Florida legislature must conform to this plan, but when it labored, the observatory would lastly have a stable monetary base with which to plan for its long-term future.
The downsides? They have been the identical as if we didn’t gamble: An observatory with little to no astronomy funding, and due to this fact little to no astronomy analysis. Or worse, a shuttered observatory. Ultimately, and to my shock, the NSF chosen the Florida proposal.
Then in September 2017, Hurricane Maria, a class 5 storm at its peak with winds as excessive as 175 mph, smashed into Puerto Rico, inflicting $90 billion in damages throughout the island. Superficially no less than, the observatory was fortunate. A 100 meter antenna was ripped off the platform, destroying a number of hundred of the dish’s panels when it fell. For some time, some tools within the valley beneath the dish was accessible solely by kayak. Still, the telescope was amassing information 9 days after Maria handed, earlier than anybody may make a cellphone name to San Juan, whilst among the employees at Arecibo additionally acted as first responders, distributing 14,000 gallons of ingesting water a day.
Six months later, with the island nonetheless reeling, the University of Central Florida took over Arecibo. That June, a panel of scientists appointed by the NSF chosen a proposal to construct a brand new, cryogenically cooled, one-of-a-kind receiver for the telescope, able to mapping the wisps of hydrogen fuel round close by galaxies and of detecting new millisecond pulsars, neutron stars rotating 1000’s of occasions a second. Scheduled to be put in on the observatory in 2022, this new instrument demonstrated that for some astronomers, no less than, the radio telescope had an vital half to play in the way forward for the sector. In August 2019, NSF launched $12.three million to make repairs and enhancements post-Maria, and NASA awarded UCF a four-year, $19 million grant to search out extra near-Earth objects. Optimism was as soon as once more within the air.