In their final days at the Arecibo Observatory, the facility’s director Olga Figueroa Miranda hugs Michael Sulzer, head of radar sciences.After weathering hurricanes, earthquakes, budget cuts and a pandemic-induced shutdown, the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is closing its doors on 14 August. After, the site was supposed to shift from carrying out astronomy and other research to being a science education centre.
Under this plan, the agency would award between US$1 million and $3 million per year to an institution to manage the centre on a day-to-day basis. Before the telescope's collapse, the NSF was contributing $7.5 million annually to Arecibo, and management of the site was led by the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
One instrument still on site is a 12-metre radio telescope that was upgraded just this year and had been “working 24/7”, Méndez says. Since it was constructed in 2011, it has been used for a range of things, including solar observations. Equipment in the ageing facility at Arecibo is being shut down after more than six decades of service.“Once we have that, I can push for [research funds] in Congress,” she says.
Twenty or 30 years ago, Córdova Figueroa says, “we didn’t have the infrastructure to lead these types of projects”. Over the past few decades, Puerto Rico has established more research institutes, he adds. And since 1997, the percentage of the Puerto Rican workforce with a PhDOne hope for bringing research back to the site is that Arecibo might host some of the dishes that are being planned as part of the Next Generation Very Large Array.