A new era for Arecibo: legendary observatory begins next phase
The US National Science Foundation announces plan to use the historic site for biology and computer science education
The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced that four institutions will take over stewardship of the site of the former Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, as it transitions from a research hub to an education centre.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York; the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) at Río Piedras in San Juan; and the University of the Sacred Heart, also in San Juan; will oversee the new centre, in which the NSF will invest US$5 million over five years.
The decision comes nearly a year after the agency called for proposals on setting up and running an education centre at Arecibo. Two years before that, the observatory’s main telescope collapsed, and instead of rebuilding the instrument — which once made discoveries about exoplanets and studied near-Earth asteroids, among other things — the NSF said it would close down astronomy research at the site.
Monya Ruffin, deputy director of the NSF’s Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings Division, says that the agency chose the proposal submitted by the four institutions because it had “these three prongs that really jumped out to us”. If all goes according to plan, the centre will open in early 2024 and focus on education in the sciences, including biology and computer science, as well as community outreach. And its name — Arecibo C3 (Arecibo Center for Culturally Relevant and Inclusive Science Education, Computational Skills, and Community Engagement) — alludes to this trio of priorities.
“The need for computation skills, and ultimately the need to reach people in their communities and integrate science into everybody’s life, is what a science centre does,” says Jason Williams, an assistant director at Cold Spring Harbor’s DNA learning lab and one of the lead authors of the winning proposal.
Some researchers worry about the site’s move away from astronomy research, however. Arecibo’s prowess at astronomy was a source of pride in Puerto Rico, and many have been disappointed with the NSF’s decisions. Without the telescope or any active research on site, Arecibo C3 might struggle to reach as many students as the observatory once did, say sources who spoke to Nature. The site is on a relatively remote part of the island, but the iconic 305-metre telescope dish that stretched across the jungle was enough of an attraction to make the journey worthwhile for schoolchildren and visitors.
“You don’t have that asset now,” says Ubaldo Córdova Figueroa, a chemical engineer at UPR Mayagüez who submitted a proposal that sought to incorporate more research at the centre, but that was not selected by the NSF. And there are plenty of science museums and centres that are easier to get to in San Juan and elsewhere, he says.
Williams hopes the location will be a strength of the new centre. Having a place that people must make an effort to travel to increases the likelihood that they will also make an effort to collaborate, he says.
A new era
The NSF, the site’s main operator, has been trying to cut back its investment in Arecibo for years. Before the main telescope’s collapse, the agency was contributing $7.5 million annually.
In the years after the telescope’s destruction, researchers at the observatory continued using other instruments on site, aiming to preserve its reputation as an astronomy powerhouse. Some still hold out hope of eventually securing funding for a telescope that could rival the fallen 305-metre dish.
But at the moment, Ruffin says, there are no plans to resume operation of Arecibo’s remaining astronomical equipment — including a 12-metre radio telescope that was upgraded earlier this year.
Instead, Arecibo C3 will shift, in part, towards biology outreach. “We’re going to, for the first time, really bring the life sciences to Arecibo Observatory in a strong way,” Williams says. Cold Spring Harbor will introduce a technique known as DNA barcoding to the site, he says: students will collect DNA samples from the flora and fauna surrounding the former observatory and identify specimens from short genetic sequences, or barcodes, to catalogue the region’s biodiversity.
The new centre’s one nod to astronomy will be an exhibit that will present historical data collected at Arecibo through sound and touch. The development and maintenance of that exhibit will be led by the centre’s new director, astronomer Wanda Díaz-Merced, who has pioneered the practice of using sound to better understand astronomical data.
“We will be building on the heritage of Arecibo, but we will be building in a wider sense,” she says.
Set up for success?
Another worry about the education centre is its budget. The $5 million over five years that the NSF is contributing won’t be enough to revamp the site to the extent that would be necessary to entice students, researchers and tourists, says Olga Figueroa Miranda, the observatory’s former director. The institutions taking over the site will probably have to spend around $1 million up front to create new exhibits and teaching laboratories, and another $250,000–$500,000 to update the existing exhibits to create “an experience that people will want to come back to”, Figueroa Miranda estimates.
But, having two private institutions involved — Cold Spring Harbor and the University of the Sacred Heart — might help the centre to raise funds and potentially apply for grants that could supplement the NSF’s award, Figueroa Miranda says.
Ruffin says that the NSF considers whether a proposal can succeed within “the solicitation funding range” when it decides whether to support a project. The availability of funding is also contingent on what the US Congress allots the agency, she adds.
In the meantime, scientists will continue to watch progress at the centre and hope that research returns and a new telescope materializes. “But that looks like it’s not going to happen for now,” says Héctor Arce, an astronomer at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, “or in the near future.”
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03021-6
This story originally appeared on: Nature - Author:Anil Oza
