Subject: SETI Shutdown
Summary: Sky Survey dead, Targeted Search seeks funding
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 93 17:45:05 PDT

Last week, the Project Manager of the High Resolution Microwave 
Survey, NASA's SETI project, received formal notification from the 
NASA Administrator to shut down the HRMS project over 60 days, 
pursuant to the action by the US Congress earlier this month.  
Informed opinion is that there is almost no chance of reviving the 
NASA project for the foreseeable future.

Background:  The HRMS was the most ambitious SETI project to date.  
The Sky Survey segment of the Project was based at JPL and had the 
goal of searching the entire sky at all frequencies between 1 and 10 GHz 
using DSN antennas, an enormous task.  For comparison, the Harvard 
META project searched the whole sky over about 2 MHz, and the 
Berkeley SERENDIP project, currently running  at Arecibo, surveys ~10 
MHz over a substantial part of the northern sky.  All these surveys 
suffer from relatively poor sensitivities; they fail by many orders of 
magnitude to be able to detect the emissions of planets with 
technologies similar to ours.  The META project, for example, requires 
a transmitter with EIRP of 7,000,000 GW at 1000 light years (a typical 
stellar distance in an all-sky survey) to produce a candidate signal.  The
HRMS Targeted Search, run out of Ames Research Center,  had a 
different strategy:  with long integrations on individual stars using the 
largest antennas in the world, it would have achieved a sensitivity (at 
Arecibo) sufficient to detect an EIRP of 0.4 GW at 10 ly (a typical 
distance to a nearby star).  The frequency range from 1 to 3 GHz was to 
be searched for about 1000 of the nearest selected solar-type stars.

Current Status:  1) The Sky Survey has built  and is using a prototype 
system at L and X band.  Observations will cease.  The equipment will 
be stored, probably at a DSN telescope.  2) The Targeted Search was 
deployed at Arecibo last year with a 10 MHz pre-production system.  
This system is now back at Ames, being upgraded into a 20 MHz 
production system, in preparation for deployment to the 64 meter 
Parkes antenna in Australia next year..  Unfortunately, this upgrade 
means that everything has been taken apart.  We hope to be able to 
reassemble the 10 MHz system and get it into some kind of working 
condition before the shutdown completes.  3) JPL was nearing 
completion of an innovative feed/cryogenic amplifier system that 
spanned 1 to 3 GHz in just two packages.  We hope to salvage some of 
this gear.  4) The HRMS was partially supporting SETI efforts at Harvard, 
Berkeley, and Ohio State; much, possibly all, of 
this funding will be lost.  5) A number of university scientists were  
being funded as part of the Investigators' Working Group; these too 
will get the ax.  6) The joint NSF/HRMS curriculum development 
project at the SETI Institute can, we hope, be saved by reprogramming 
at NASA.

Future Prospects:  Since the Sky Survey depends largely on NASA 
antennas and JPL personnel, prospects for the SS seem bleak.  The 
Targeted Search, on the other hand, was run primarily through the 
non-profit SETI Institute (under a NASA Cooperative Agreement) and 
planned to use non-NASA telescopes, so there is still a _chance_ to do 
something.  The SETI Institute has begun an emergency  appeal to 
foundations and wealthy individuals to fund deployment of the 
Targeted Search.  In the longer term, the Institute is seeking stable 
private funding to allow continued development and sustained use of 
SETI instrumentation, both internally and by support of external 
groups.  We hope to be able to improve the sensitivity  by a factor of 5-
10 and the search speed  by a factor of 10-30 within a decade.

John Dreher
Targeted Search System Scientist
dreher@bkyast.berkeley.edu




-- 
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