{"id":18627,"date":"2018-02-22T18:03:01","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T10:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/university-of-central-florida-is-taking-charge-of-gigantic-arecibo-radio-telescope\/"},"modified":"2018-02-22T18:03:01","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T10:03:01","slug":"university-of-central-florida-is-taking-charge-of-gigantic-arecibo-radio-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/university-of-central-florida-is-taking-charge-of-gigantic-arecibo-radio-telescope\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Central Florida is taking charge of gigantic Arecibo radio telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_399794\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-399794\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-399794\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/180222-arecibo-630x515.jpg\" alt=\"Arecibo Observatory\" width=\"630\" height=\"515\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/180222-arecibo-630x515.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/180222-arecibo-768x628.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/180222-arecibo-1260x1030.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/180222-arecibo.jpg 1759w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-399794\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Arecibo Observatory has a 1,000-foot-wide radio dish built into Puerto Rico\u2019s karst terrain. (NAIC Arecibo Observatory \/ NSF Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The 1,000-foot Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, made famous by such movies as \u201cContact\u201d and the James Bond thriller \u201cGoldeneye,\u201d will be under new management.<\/p>\n<p>Today the National Science Foundation announced that the University of Central Florida has begun the transition process for taking on operation and management of the observatory. \u201cNSF is currently negotiating the operations and management award with UCF,\u201d the federal agency said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>The handover is aimed at reducing the federal outlay for the Arecibo Observatory, which has been struggling with squeezed budgets in recent years.<\/p>\n<p>NSF says it anticipates its contribution to the facility\u2019s upkeep will decrease over time from the current level of about $8 million per year to about $2 million by the end of fiscal year 2022. (NASA also provides more than $3 million in annual funding.)<\/p>\n<p>The university will lead a consortium in partnership with&nbsp;Universidad Metropolitana in San Juan, Puerto Rico; and the engineering company Yang Enterprises Inc. in Oviedo, Fla.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUCF\u2019s oversight of this crucial resource further solidifies our university as a leader in space-related research,\u201d the university\u2019s president, John Hitt, said in a news release. \u201cThe observatory will provide a valuable new dimension to space science at UCF while creating more academic opportunities for students and faculty at UCF, in Puerto Rico and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"UCF to Manage Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OXGx7Mfv-IM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In a statement, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., called the deal a \u201cwin-win-win\u201d for UCF and Florida as well as for Puerto Rico and the thousands of visiting scientists who conduct observations at Arecibo. (I was a visitor 15 years ago.)<\/p>\n<p>The management plan calls for upgrading the capabilities of the telescope&nbsp;\u2014 which spends a lot more time tracking asteroids, pulsars, fast radio bursts (and the occasional weird signal) than it does looking for alien messages. Ray Lugo, head of UCF\u2019s Florida Space Institute, told Science that the consortium hopes to attract more business related to such applications as asteroid mining and military sensor testing.<\/p>\n<p>Outside the science community, Arecibo is perhaps best-known as the place where Jodie Foster\u2019s character began her search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or where James Bond (played by Pierce Brosnan) dodged death in the climactic scene of \u201cGoldeneye.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last year, Arecibo went through a real-world, life-and-death drama when it suffered Hurricane Maria\u2019s blows. The facility sustained significant damage, but fortunately, the observatory\u2019s staff members were unharmed and able to help out with relief efforts.<\/p>\n<p>For most of its 55-year history, Arecibo reigned as the world\u2019s largest single-dish radio telescope&nbsp;\u2014 but that title was passed on to China\u2019s Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, in 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Arecibo Observatory has a 1,000-foot-wide radio dish built into Puerto Rico\u2019s karst terrain. (NAIC Arecibo Observatory \/ NSF Photo) The 1,000-foot Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, made famous by such movies as \u201cContact\u201d and the James Bond thriller \u201cGoldeneye,\u201d will be under new management. Today the National Science Foundation announced that the University [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5122,1991,2001,2002],"class_list":["post-18627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-arecibo","tag-national-science-foundation","tag-radio-astronomy","tag-university-of-central-florida"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}