SETI puts on hold its quest for alien signal

The efforts to track down radio signals from deep space were hit by the cash crunch faced by Seti.

SETI Institute, {Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has announced that it is forced to put to hibernation its Allen Telescope Array (ATA)as it has run out of cash.

Hibernating mode means that the operation will be stopped and reduced staff will be kept the system in safe mode.

The $50 million Allen Telescope Array situated in rural northern California began its operations in October 2007 and was planning to expand its project from 40 dishes to 350 dishes which would have been covering an area of around 90 square miles, but due to budget squeeze from federal and state government, has put all the future planning on halt.

Private Donors, the US National Science foundation and the State Government of California had been funding the operations till now.

Tom Pierson, SETI’s CEO, in a letter, said that the annual expenditure is around $2.5 million that includes the operations cost and SETI’s “science efforts” and an additional amount of around $5 million is needed to study the 1,235 planets found by the Kepler mission.

Sensing this problem around two year back, SETI had initiated talks with United States Air Force (USAF) for raising funds, by helping in tracking space debris.

Meanwhile the Institute is engaged in developing instruments and software that will help in finding alien signal when the funds crisis is solved. This funds crisis has to be solved soon as the money left with ATA is enough to keep it in hibernation mode only for few months.

ATA is the only dedicated and the biggest facility of the SETI Institute by far which is a unique research program in the whole world.