The Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank in the United Kingdom could face closure unless alternative funding is secured.
Credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty
Calls are growing for the United Kingdom’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, to restore funding for the iconic Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory, near Manchester.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the UK’s main research funding agency, announced on 27 July that it will end its annual £2.8 million (about US$3.8 million) contribution to e-Merlin in 2028. E-Merlin is a network of seven UK radio telescopes funded through UKRI’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). Because e-Merlin provides the Lovell Telescope’s only dedicated scientific funding, the radio telescope could be forced to stop operating unless new financial support is found.
“To close it down would be to poke out some of the world’s clearest eyes on the sky,” states an open letter urging the government to protect the telescope. The letter describes the proposed funding withdrawal as “foolish and short-sighted” and has been signed by prominent figures from science and the arts, including British astronaut Tim Peake, particle physicist and musician Brian Cox, and UK poet laureate Simon Armitage. In addition to studying the Universe, the Lovell Telescope tracks human-made objects in space, including space debris and, famously, the rocket that launched the Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957.
The wider Jodrell Bank site, owned by the University of Manchester, will remain an important centre for scientific outreach and the headquarters of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The SKA is a network of radio antennas in Australia and South Africa that will become the world’s largest telescope when completed. The STFC is investing £327 million in the SKA between 2021 and 2030.
The decision to withdraw funding from e-Merlin is part of broader UK science funding cuts resulting from a prioritization exercise carried out by the STFC under former prime minister Keir Starmer and the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology. That department, established only three years ago, has since been disbanded and merged into a wider business department.
The cuts are being introduced despite an overall increase in UKRI’s budget. The agency’s funding is expected to rise over the next four years, with additional investment focused largely on priority fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum technologies. These areas are due to receive £1.6 billion and £1 billion, respectively, during that period. STFC funding, however, has remained flat. Rising energy costs and increased membership fees for international science organizations, partly caused by unfavorable exchange rates, have added pressure to the research budget, UKRI says.
UK science facilities face cumulative funding cuts
The STFC announced last month that the scientific facilities it supports will need to secure more income from commercial sources to remain operational. These facilities include the Diamond Light Source at Harwell and other centres that host major scientific instruments and national laboratories. The latest funding decisions show how projects in the STFC’s Particle Physics, Astronomy and Nuclear Physics (PPAN) portfolio will be affected. Annual funding for this stream is expected to decrease by 2.7%, or £6 million, by 2030.
According to STFC executive chair Michele Dougherty, the reductions are necessary to protect funding for postdoctoral researchers and PhD opportunities while maintaining “the UK’s international leadership” in science.
The announcement also confirmed the future of international research projects whose infrastructure funding was cut by the STFC in December as part of the same review.
As first reported by Research Professional News, an investment of around £49 million for an upgrade to the LHCb experiment at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, has been cancelled. The UK has long played a leading role in the experiment. The STFC also withdrew a planned £58.8 million contribution to the US Electron-Ion Collider, which is designed to investigate the structure of atomic nuclei.
The latest decision to deny both projects funding through the separate PPAN programme effectively eliminates the possibility of securing investment through an alternative STFC funding route.
Source: www.nature.com