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Arecibo’s management changes indicated that the observatory still had a future. In 2011, SRI International — the nonprofit research organization that developed the first computer mouse, inkjet printing, and Siri voice assistant — became the manager of the observatory, sharing those responsibilities with two other organizations, including San Juan Metropolitan University. Until this arrangement was made, the Puerto Rican organization was not part of the observatory’s oversight.
While SRI was striving to be an important Arecibo, however, the NSF, in the name of due diligence, was actively weakening it. He published a 300-page report detailing the cost of removing the observatory and returning the site to its former state in the event of the facility being dismantled. Proponents of the observatory were deliberately and severely underestimating the costs of deactivation, a way to make that decision more enjoyable.
The NSF also reported that the next management organization would have to approve a budget that would be further reduced, to $ 2 million a year by 2022. In the fall of 2015, the director of the observatory, Robert Kerr, a longtime champion of the facility. exit after falling with NSF and SRI. Perhaps not surprisingly, SRI did not ask for the contract renewal request to expire.
So in the summer of 2017 — at which time I became a veteran of many committees — I went back to Washington, sat around a table 1,500 miles from the coke, and discussed the deplorable future of a place in an inappropriate place. love. This time I felt optimistic at home. The University of Central Florida, the unexpected candidate to manage the observatory, made an offer to change the game. The university would effectively convert an facility owned by Arecibo Florida, and the state will be responsible for covering the observatory’s operations and maintenance costs.
It was dangerous because the university had no experience managing the Arecibo-sized observatory, and had no real tradition of radio astronomy research. More importantly, the Florida legislature would have to agree on that plan, but if it worked, the observatory would eventually have a solid financial basis for planning for the long-term future.
Disadvantages? They were like if we didn’t bet: an observatory with little or no funding for astronomy and therefore little research in astronomy. Or worse, a closed observatory. In the end, and to my surprise, the NSF selected the Florida proposal.
In September 2017, Hurricane Maria, a Category 5 storm with a 175 mph wind, crashed in Puerto Rico, causing $ 90 billion in damage to the entire island. On the surface at least, the observatory was lucky. It was a 100-foot antenna he ripped off the platform, when the plate collapsed destroying hundreds of panels. For a time, some of the valley’s equipment was only reached by kayak under the plate. Still, the telescope was collecting data nine days after Maria passed, before anyone made a cell phone to San Juan, even though some Arecibo employees acted as the primary culprits, handing out 14,000 gallons of water a day.
Six months later, while the island was still hanging, the University of Central Florida took over Arecibo. In June, a team of scientists nominated by the NSF selected a proposal to build a single-receiver, cryogenically cooled, single-receiver for the telescope capable of mapping hydrogen gas chains around nearby galaxies and detecting new milliseconds. pulsars, neutron stars that rotate thousands of times a second. Planned for installation at the observatory in 2022, this new tool proved to some astronomers that at least the radio telescope played an important role in the future of the field. In August 2019, NSF provided $ 12.3 million for repairs and improvements after Mary, and NASA provided UCF with a $ 19 million four-year grant to find more objects near Earth. Optimism was in the air again.
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