Espionage? No word on why a solar observatory in New Mexico was closed.
Remote solar observatory remains closed after mysterious evacuation
Nobody is quite sure what’s going on at the Sunspot Solar Observatory in New Mexico, which was quickly and mysteriously evacuated on 6 September amid reports of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) probe, and has remained closed. The manager of the mountaintop site, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), today released a statement saying the observatory “will remain closed until further notice due to an ongoing security concern.”
In the wake of the shutdown, Otero County Sheriff Benny House told the Alamogordo Daily News: “The FBI were up there. What their purpose was nobody will say.” Facility employees are similarly in the dark. “We have absolutely no idea what is going on,” says Alisdair Davey, a data center scientist at the National Solar Observatory (NSO). “As in truly nothing, which in itself is just weird.” Messages left with the FBI field office in Albuquerque were not returned.
All buildings on the site have been shut down and the staff of approximately 12 have been sent home, says James McAteer, Sunspot director and an NMSU astronomer in Las Cruces. He says shutdown events are not unusual, because remote mountaintop facilities can be closed due to sewage leaks, downed power lines, or snowstorms. But the Apache Point Observatory, located slightly lower down on the same mountain, remains open.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS), which has a small office on the same site as Sunspot that mostly handles mail deliveries for the observatory, has also been shut down, though spokespeople for the office say the post office being closed is incidental. “Whatever’s occurring there has nothing to do with us,” says Rod Spurgeon, the USPS spokesperson for the New Mexico area. Spurgeon downplayed the idea that the incident could involve any sort of mailed biohazard or bioterror. “I haven’t heard of anything like that going on,” he says. Liz Davis, a public information officer at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which handles law enforcement for the USPS, confirms there is “no criminal activity, which is what Postal Inspection Service would be dealing with.”
The Sunspot observatory on Sacramento Peak overlooks Holloman Air Force Base and an observer could potentially see out to the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Test range. That has raised questions about possible espionage. “New Mexico is a center of national-security-related science, and for that reason it has also been a prominent venue for foreign espionage,” says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. “Spies go where the secrets are, and there are plenty of secrets in New Mexico.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/remote-solar-observatory-remains-closed-after-mysterious-evacuation
= new reply since forum marked as read
Or something, IDK. 
He said that the only thing he's heard that seems remotely credible is some sort of threat.
Which strikes me as only remotely credible, because if one was threatened, why close them all? And it strikes me as beyond weird that someone would threaten solar observatories. 
Although I don't think like a terrorist, so what do I know?
Mulder: All right, Homer. We want you to re-create your every move the night you saw this alien.
Homer: Well, the evening began at the gentleman’s club, where we were discussing Wittgenstein over a game of backgammon.
Scully: Mr. Simpson, it’s a felony to lie to the F.B.I.
Homer: We were sitting in Barney’s car eating packets of mustard. You happy?
