arecibo_update_011220 In announcing a 27 percent cut in funding for asteroid research at the Arecibo Observatory, a top NASA official said today that the National Science Foundation should step up to the plate and share the burden of protecting Earth by paying for the whole program.
The program involves $550,000 that NASA has provided each year to the observatory in Puerto Rico to support personel and operation of equipment needed to study Near Earth Asteroids, or NEOs. These are objects larger than 1 kilometer (.62 miles) that could threaten the planet with global devastation.
Some 500 NEOs have been discovered, but about 500 more are thought to exist. NASA has a congressional mandate to find them by 2008.
Arecibo's radio telescope does not find asteroids. Rather, it helps to characterize them -- to learn what they are made of, how dense they are, how they spin, and where they are going.
NASA officials said they were eager to shift money into programs that find asteroids.
But in a sign of the turmoil that comes with tough budgetary times, NASA informed Arecibo one week ago that they would eliminate the funding, then said today that they would instead reduce it to $400,000 for 2002 and then subject it to peer review.
The temporary reprieve was first reported by SPACE.com earlier today.
Next September, Arecibo would have to request this money and compete with other funding requests, said Colleen Hartman, director of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division, in a conference call with reporters this afternoon. She said Arecibo managers would have to submit a proposal to NASA that would be peer reviewed along with other requests for research money.
"Based on our external review process" Arecibo may or may not get funded, she said.
Others should help
Meanwhile, Hartman said NASA would try to persuade the National Science Foundation (NSF), which provides the bulk of Arecibo's nearly $11 million annual budget, to take on the cost of the asteroid program.
The NSF should "step up to the plate," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for space science at NASA Headquarters.
"NASA has gotten the primary responsibility for protecting Earth," Weiler said. "Worrying about NEOs is not just a NASA job. It should be shared by the agencies."
A spokesman for the National Science Foundation said his agency is not yet prepared to evaluate the merits of such a plan.
"This all happened so fast that we don't really have a view, a program or a plan," said Richard Barvainis, the NSF's program director for radio astronomy at Arecibo. "We simply haven't had time to analyze what the impacts would be. It was news to us last Thursday."
Officials at Arecibo could apply to the NSF for the funding. The proposal would be subject to peer review like any other submission, Barvainis said. A decision would take three to six months and would be based on the peer review, the overall NSF astronomy budget, and the priority in relation to many other programs, he said.
Barvainis points out that by providing $9.5 million annually to Arecibo, the NSF provides the core support for the telescope's operations and maintenance.
"Without such support the planetary radar program could not exist, and so NSF is indeed already contributing in a substantial way to this effort," he said.
Why we care
NASA spends $3.55 million overall each year searching for and studying NEOs. Much of that money involves space-based research like the photos and data of asteroid Eros collected earlier this year by the NEAR spacecraft.
Scientists want to characterize space rocks so that if one is ever found to be heading our way, an effort could be mounted to deflect or destroy it.
"Before you send Bruce Willis with a bunch of nukes, you better know what these things are made out of," Weiler said. "Density is kind of important when you're trying to blow it up."
Weiler argued that the space-based efforts are more productive than ground-based for characterizing asteroids.
Still, several astronomers said Arecibo is a crucial element in the effort to learn what asteroids are made. The initial NASA decision to kill the funding was criticized by several astronomers when it was made public late Wednesday, Dec. 19.
"It was quite a shock to me," said Donald B. Campbell, a Cornell University professor and head of the Radar Astronomy Group at Arecibo. NASA informed Campbell of the cut via a letter that was mailed in early December.
Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, called the decision "very short-sighted," in a statement Wednesday afternoon.
NASA's Hartman said today's reversal was not made because of the criticism. She said she spoke with Campbell each of the past three days about options and told him of the reversal Thursday morning.
Weiler said NASA's desire to be relieved from funding the Arecibo program did not mark a move away from ground-based astronomy in general. He said it was a mistake that NASA ever got involved in this particular program without subjecting it to formal peer review, an error that the agency was now trying to rectify.
Arecibo is a giant radio telescope -- the dish is 1,000 feet across (305 meters). It is used to study everything from Earth's atmosphere to asteroids and distant galaxies. It is also employed by the SETI Institute to search for signals from other intelligent civilizations. None of these other programs would be affected by any NASA decisions.
NASA also provided about $11 million of capital funds in recent years that enhanced Arecibo's ability to study solar system objects. The annual $550,000 contribution also allowed for studies of other objects in the solar system besides asteroids.
Read More: The Initial Story of the Reversal of Arecibo's Fortunes
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