The SETI Institute Is Back in Business!

Great news about SETI – the SETI Institute which was shut down in April will start operations again soon. The news comes from Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log blog.

The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) is a “Large Number of Small Dishes” (LNSD) array designed to be highly effective for “commensal” (simultaneous) surveys of conventional radio astronomy projects and SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) observations at centimeter wavelengths.

Back in April, the Institute had to put its 42-antenna Allen Telescope Array, in Northern California, into “hibernation” due to budget woes. The biggest hit was the loss of funding by the University of California at Berkeley, the institute’s partner for operating the antenna array.

Following the shutdown of the antenna array, the SETI Institute and its fans in Silicon Valley set up a Web-based campaign for donations: SETIstars. The campaign began in June, and about 45 days later, on Aug. 3, contributions hit the $200,000 mark which was the sum needed to bring the antenna array back into operation. Contributions now stand at $222,210 and the site remains open for donations.

Contributors include Jodie Foster, the actress who played a SETI researcher in [easyazon_link identifier=”B001AQT0RC” locale=”US” tag=”dublinnightskyob”]the movie Contact[/easyazon_link]; science-fiction writer Larry Niven, creator of the [easyazon_link keywords=”Ringworld” locale=”US” tag=”dublinnightskyob”]Ringworld series of novels[/easyazon_link]; and Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, who flew around the moon in 1968. “It is absolutely irresponsible of the human race not to be searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence,” Anders wrote in a note accompanying his contribution.

The SETI Institute requires about $2.5 million per year in funding but they’re now looking at ways of reducing those costs while seeking funding from other sources since UC-Berkeley is no longer a funding partner.

What astronomers at the SETI Institute hope to do in the future is to turn the telescope array at the most promising planetary systems identified by NASA’s Kepler mission. Jill Tarter, the institute’s director of SETI research, said in April that the fund-raising target for the Kepler follow-up project would be $5 million.

setiQuest is a site set up by the Institute where citizen scientists can help sift through the data expected from the Allen Telescope Array.

It’s heartening to see that people are interested enough in SETI to take action on keeping it alive. Government gave up on in back in 1993 and the SETI Institute received all its funding from non-government sources since then.

Despite people’s interest in the topic, the shutdown of the SETI Institute and its re-awakening has not been reported in the mainstream news. Science stories never seem to get much airplay in news bulletins unless it’s about the “evil” science does.

I wonder ho much interest there would be from the public if a similar donation-driven campaign was created to seek funding for a manned space program?