Clinton turns attention to observatory in Puerto Rico (Arecibo)

[Wilms]

Clinton turns attention to observatory in Puerto Rico

Jeannette Rivera-lyles | Sentinel Staff Writer

April 25, 2008

The financially strapped Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has a new patron in New York senator and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton -- just weeks before the island's Democratic primary.

The Cornell University-operated observatory in the northwestern part of the island risks being shut down if it doesn't find new sources of funding. The National Science Foundation, which has supported the facility until now, announced last year that it would cut most of its budget for the facility by 2011.

A bill filed by Clinton last week seeks to reverse that decision by requiring the NSF to reinstate the funds.

Foundation officials said that, although the observatory does "good and unique science," the foundation can fund less than a third of all of the proposals it gets.

snip

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/orl-arecibo2508apr25,0,5117790.story

[mike_c]

1. huh? requiring the NSF to fund Arecibo without appropriating funds...

...for the purpose is ridiculous. It simply diverts funding from other projects. I'd like to see Arecibo continue operation, but politicians interfering with the NSF is not a good way to accomplish that.

[bananas]

2. I have no problem with this - the funds were appropriated.

This is Congress' job - to appropriate funds for specific projects.
They always put in specifics about what should and should not get money.
If they put Arecibo under the DOD for "space defense" from asteroids,
it would be rolling in dough.
From an article last month:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/orl-arecibo2408mar24,0,4527961.story

<snip>

Political rescue efforts

Scientists have come out in support for restoring funding to Arecibo. Last year dozens of astronomers from across the nation appeared at a hearing before Congress to ask that the facility be saved from the budget ax.

But nothing gets done in the nation's capital without political muscle. The commonwealth does not have a congressional delegation in proportion to its 4 million residents. It is represented in Congress by a nonvoting House member.

"It is easy to run over Puerto Ricans," Kerr said. "We have, by structure, very poor representation in Washington."

By contrast, other facilities that were also placed on the science foundation's chopping block have since secured funding after a powerful politician came to their rescue.

<snip>

[mike_c]

3. are you sure?

I was under the impression that the funds were from the general research money that NSF awards competitively each year. THAT money is subject to panel review, and each program has a budget that must be allocated by the review panels. There are some projects earmarked for long term support, of course-- maintaining the infrastructure of the long term ecological research (LTER) sites, for example. I thought Arecibo was that sort of arrangement. If that's the case, then I thoroughly oppose politicizing the review process-- at some point the NSF is likely to decide that ANY project funded in previous years has had its run.

On the other hand, if congress has appropriated money specifically to support Arecibo and charged the NSF with administering that appropriation, that's a different matter. That's the sort of appropriation I'm talking about, otherwise known as a FUNDED MANDATE. But telling the NSF what programs to support, how to perform its reviews, and so on is not a job that most politicians are even remotely qualified to address.

[bananas]

7. details details

I don't know the details of the Arecibo funding.
I see there's a discussion on the badastronomy.com blog with pros and cons.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/04/25/clinton-introduces-bill-to-fund-arecibo/

Apr 25 2008
Posted at 3:00 pm in Astronomy, Politics

The Arecibo radio telescope is the single biggest telescope in the world. It has been used for decades to further our understanding of the Universe, so of course its funding is threatened.

However, Senator Hillary Clinton has introduced a bill to get much-needed money for the telescope’s operation. Since Cornell (which is in New York) operates the observatory, this isn’t totally altruistic of her, but still. Her official statement hits all the right marks.

I’m not thrilled that this is an earmark, because that forces money to go certain places and takes discretion out of the hands of the people who get the money (in this case, the Nation Science Foundation). However, in this case, the NSF has made the wrong decision, choosing to cut funding for this much-needed observatory. Besides all the science it does, it also can be used to get accurate orbits for near-Earth asteroids (by pinging them with radar), which is an obviously important function.

I asked my friend, astronomer Seth Shostak — an advocate of the ’scope — what he thinks on this, and here’s his reply:

It’s great that the legislature has noted the threat to Arecibo. This is one of radio astronomy’s most useful instruments — it’s used to study pulsars, galaxies, asteroids and for SETI, as well as for other research. This antenna simply has no peer. There’s no other instrument where you can wield 18 acres of metal mesh to catch the faintest radio static from the cosmos. Admittedly, it’s regrettable that this effort to save Arecibo involves earmarks. It would be better if American science policy was pursued in less ad hoc ways. But one shouldn’t let the idealistic wish for perfection interfere with a practical result that’s good. I hope that this gets passed, and that Arecibo continues to scan the skies.

Mind you, this bill has only been introduced, not voted on. A similar bill stalled earlier, so I urge you to contact your Reps and let them know what you think. Action for Space has the details.

<snip comments>

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Just in time to receive the gratitude of the Puerto Rican people

in their primary.

Funny how that works.

[jberryhill]

5. Impressive Place, But....

Rendered obsolete by large arrays of smaller units.



I was glad to see it before it was gone.

[bananas]

6. Is it obsolete?

According to the article,
"The Arecibo observatory houses the only radio telescope in the world that can detect with enough precision where and when an asteroid would hit Earth."

That could be very useful.

[jberryhill]

8. I'd be surprised if that's correct

While it is a large "single" telescope, the effective aperture of other arrays of smaller units is larger.

The Atacama Large Millimeter Array will kick ass.

Knowing where and when an asteroid will strike is not very useful, since we can all pretty much kiss our asses goodbye no matter what.

Certainly any candidate who wants to throw money at it, regardless of scientific merit, will do fine in Puerto Rico, as it is a huge point of regional pride.

[bananas]

9. Apparently it is correct

It seems that right now, only Arecibo and Goldstone can do radar astronomy,
and Arecibo is 20 times more powerful than Goldstone.
Only some of the new arrays will be able to do this,
and they will be busy with other tasks.

Campbell was among five scientists to address the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the House Committee on Science and Technology. He discussed the role of Arecibo's radar system, which is one of only two high-powered radars in the world used for studying solar system bodies, on characterizing NEOs and their potential threat to Earth.

Arecibo's radar is over 20 times more sensitive than its counterpart, NASA's Deep Space Network 70-meter antenna at Goldstone, Calif., Campbell noted. But because it is less maneuverable, both systems are vital and complementary.

"The more we know about NEOs in general and about specific ones that pose a threat to Earth, the easier it will be to design effective mitigation strategies," said Campbell. "NEOs form a very diverse population encompassing a large range of sizes, shapes, rotation states, densities, internal structure and binary nature."

Radar provides the best way to survey and categorize such objects, he said. "For an object that we know poses a direct threat to Earth, radar can provide vital input to mitigation planning, including planning for any precursor space mission."

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Nov07/arecibo.congress.html

“An impact hazard is a risk comparable to other natural hazards, like earthquakes or hurricanes,” said Prof. Jean-Luc Margot, astronomy. “Lots of money goes to mitigating the effects of earthquakes and hurricanes, but we can really do nothing about them. We can actually do something about impact hazards. If we identify a potential impactor, we have the technology to deflect it.” Margot and other scientists use Arecibo to characterize the orbits of NEAs to incredible accuracies, so that they can identify which objects are worth worrying about.

“No other instruments can do that,” said Margot.

http://www.naic.edu/aorss/cornell_daily_sun.html

The purpose of the Congressional hearing was to discuss the issue of potentially hazardous Near Earth Objects, asteroids or comets whose trajectories bring them close enough to Earth to make experts worry about a collision. Congress issued an act in 2005 that directed NASA to “detect, track, catalogue and characterize the physical characteristics” of all the nearby objects that have a diameter of 140 meters or larger — about the size of a luxury liner. Congress asked NASA to find 90 percent of these objects by 2020 at the latest. This past March, NASA replied with a report saying that, unless they could build a new telescope by 2015, the goal was unrealistic.

“It was essentially a feasibility request,” said Campbell. “Finding and characterizing 90 percent of NEOs by the 2020 deadline cannot be done using current plans for ground-based telescopes.”

NASA expects several telescopes that would have the necessary survey capabilities to be completed in the next five years, but most of them are intended for purposes other than just searching for asteroids. One of these is the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, expected in 2012, which will survey the entire sky every seven days. In these frequent wholesale sweeps of the sky, the LSST will inevitably discover thousands of asteroids, said Campbell. However, its primary purpose is to study dark energy — not to catalogue asteroids.

“If the LSST spent full time searching for asteroids, it could probably meet the objective, if it in fact is in operation by 2012,” said Campbell. “But since they don’t plan to spend all of their time looking for asteroids, it would take them a number of years longer than that to achieve the 90 percent goal.”

NASA’s report proposed that the only way they could meet Congress’s objectives using ground-based telescopes was if they had a telescope similar to the LSST that was dedicated exclusively to finding asteroids. Such a telescope combined with the LSST and other telescopes could finish the project by 2020, but a dedicated asteroid-hunting telescope alone would take until 2024.

In addition to finding the majority of potentially hazardous NEOs, Congress has also asked NASA to determine how likely it is that any of these objects will collide with the Earth, and to figure out how we would stop it. To do this, NASA needs to determine things like the object’s size, mass, orbit around the sun and composition to a very high accuracy. This sort of measurement is the forte of planetary radar, a method of observation where scientists bounce radio waves off of the objects they wish to study, and make detailed images of them by listening to the echoes.

Arecibo’s planetary radar system is the most sensitive in the world, making it an enormous asset to scientists trying to prevent an asteroid impact. The Puerto Rico-based observatory’s financial future, though, has been in flux since early November 2006, when a Senior Review committee appointed by the National Science Foundation recommended that the observatory’s operating funds be cut by more than 50 percent by 2011. If Cornell and the observatory could not raise funds from another source, the NSF recommended that it close.

According to Campbell, “the Senior Review did not make any reference to the planetary program, even though many planetary astronomers wrote letters to them — to which little or no attention was paid.”

http://cornellsun.com/node/26103

[jberryhill]

10. "and to figure out how we would stop it"

...and that's the rub.

These reports all seem to be connected with the lobbying effort. The NSF has to balance a lot of priorities within the NSF budget. Personally, I'd much rather we fund science across the board at an appropriate level, but scoring points in a presidential campaign is not a way to set NSF funding priorities.

[Indenturedebtor]

11. While I think our science and education budgets

Should be at minimum quadrupled, if she somehow steals the nomination McDeath would bludgeon her with this in the GE.