Management and Operations of the Green Bank Observatory FY 2025 - FY 2026

Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) will manage and operate the Green Bank Observatory (GBO) from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2026. As part of this project, AUI will initiate a critically-needed infrastructure refurbishment plan to ensure the long-term safety and scientific vitality of GBO. Furthermore, it will reintegrate GBO into the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) to realize a coherent vision of service to the radio astronomy community, with a renewed emphasis on improving scientific capability, user support, archival data access, and software tools.

Astronomy is an important element in meeting national goals related to diversity, science and technology education, and increased U.S. competitiveness. GBO’s exemplary education and public outreach programs in West Virginia will create unique STEM learning experiences for K– 16 students, educators, professional scientists, and the public. The Green Bank Science Center attracts nearly 40,000 visitors each year, and active telescopes on site provide invaluable training opportunities for students, as well as science enrichment for a very wide demographic.

Driven by the priorities of the U.S. research community as articulated in the 2020 Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics, GBO will enable important discoveries across many fields of astronomy and astrophysics. The major research instrument at GBO is the 100-meter diameter Green Bank Telescope (GBT)---the world's largest fully steerable single-dish radio telescope.

The GBT's large sky coverage, very high sensitivity, and extensive suite of instruments make it a powerful and versatile telescope which enables advances in virtually all areas of modern astrophysics. Some major studies enabled by the GBT will include: characterizing the low-frequency gravitational wave background; determining the nature and complex environments of mysterious fast radio bursts; establishing the chemical inventory of molecular clouds and evolved stars to elucidate the growth of molecular complexity in space; measuring the distribution of superheated gas in the intercluster medium of galaxy clusters; and scanning nearby stars, the Galactic Plane, and external galaxies for technosignatures.

The GBT offers excellent complementarity and synergy with interferometric arrays, such as the Very Large Array, the Very Long Baseline Array, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. It also plays a critical role as a highly sensitive element of very long baseline interferometry.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.