[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 17113-17114]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             RECOGNITION OF THE MAGDALENA RIDGE OBSERVATORY

 Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise to congratulate the Office 
of Naval Research for the successful design review to begin development 
of the next great astronomical telescope. The Navy is the preeminent 
authority in the areas of Precise Time and Astrometry, and distributes 
Earth Orientation parameters and other Astronomical Data required for 
accurate navigation and fundamental astronomy. Now they are managing an 
international team to build the Magdalena Ridge Observatory, MRO, on a 
10,000 foot mountain in central New Mexico. The Navy, along with the 
Air Force, Army, and a consortium of universities from the United 
States and the United Kingdom, will break ground on October 20 this 
year.
  This month, the prestigious scientific journal, Physics Today, 
published a superbly written article that explains the MRO. The project 
will create a unique array of mirrors that can take pictures of bright 
celestial objects with a resolution equivalent to a huge telescope 
measuring 400 meters in diameter.
  I ask that a copy of the article be printed in the Record.
  The article follows.

   New Mexico Plans Optical Interferometer and Fast-Slewing Telescope

       How does a minor university land a major observatory? In 
     New Mexico Tech's case, it helped that the university has 
     access to a high, dark site, that the Magdalena Ridge 
     Observatory (MRO) will have national security applications, 
     and that the project has allies in Congress.
       ``We had a coalition of universities looking for an 
     observatory,'' says Van Romero, vice president for research 
     at New Mexico Tech (officially the New Mexico Institute of 
     Mining and Technology), which has around 1800 students and 
     110 faculty members. New Mexico Tech and its partners--New 
     Mexico State University, New Mexico Highlands University, and 
     the University of Puerto Rico--learned that the US Army's 
     neighboring White Sands Missile Range wanted better

[[Page 17114]]

     missile tracking capability and the Air Force Research 
     Laboratory in Albuquerque was interested in developing 
     adaptive optics. ``We seemed to have a critical mass--
     universities, along with more than one military user,'' says 
     Romero. Representative Joe Skeen and Senator Pete Domenici, 
     both New Mexico Republicans, supported creating the MRO 
     because the potential for education outreach, adaptive optics 
     research, and world-class astronomy ``all came together in a 
     happy confluence of ideas,'' says Stephen Traver, a 
     legislative fellow in Domenici's office who used to work for 
     the now retired Skeen. Domenici led the way in winning a 
     congressional markup for the $48 million observatory.
       The observatory's future home is on a ridge in the 
     Magdalena mountains near Socorro, about 130 kilometers south 
     of Albuquerque. Besides the clear skies and roughly 3200-
     meter-high perch, the site's advantages include that it is 
     near both White Sands and New Mexico Tech, it has room for 
     the observatory to expand, and it has a road and other 
     infrastructure already serving ecological and atmospheric 
     studies and the university's lightning lab (see box).
       The MRO will consist of an optical-infrared interferometer 
     with eight to ten 1.4-meter telescopes in a reconfigurable Y-
     shaped array up to 400 meters long plus a single 2.4-meter 
     telescope. Groundbreaking is scheduled for 20 October.


                            stars and scuds

       The MRO array will have a large number of bigger elements 
     distributed over a wider range of baselines than any other 
     optical interferometer in the works, says Chris Haniff, whose 
     University of Cambridge group is involved in the project. 
     MRO's angular resolution, he adds, ``will be a factor of a 
     hundred higher than the Hubble Space Telescope. That means 
     that for any class of astronomical object, you can see more 
     detail.''
       ``One of the exciting things we think we will be able to do 
     is to look at the central engines of active galactic 
     nuclei,'' says David Westpfahl, project scientist for the MRO 
     interferometer. ``All the models have a massive object at the 
     center, such as a black hole, and an accretion disk and polar 
     outflow, but the detailed shape and arrangement of these 
     things are still being worked on. We hope to be able to 
     resolve several of these objects and decide among the 
     models.'' The MRO interferometer will also be used to deduce 
     the relative rotational axes of stars in clusters, which 
     could shed light on the importance of turbulence in star 
     formation, and to study other aspects of star birth, as well 
     as star aging and planet formation.
       Fast slewing is the special feature of MRO's single 
     telescope. It will be able to zip to a particular part of the 
     sky at 10 deg. per second. The slewing was initially 
     incorporated to accommodate the US Army. The MRO offers a 
     good look at target missiles fired from Fort Wingate in 
     western New Mexico, says Tomas C. Chavez, chief of test 
     technology at White Sands. ``We could collect phenomenology 
     data during the target's boost and coast phases to help home 
     in on the target with an interceptor.'' Adds Romero, ``This 
     is a match made in heaven. The army wants to use [the 
     telescope] during the day and early morning, we want to use 
     it at night.'' The 2.4-meter mirror was donated by the air 
     force. Originally intended for classified space-based 
     research, it has hardware added to keep it from sagging in 
     Earth's gravitational field.
       Astronomers will take advantage of the fast slewing, too. 
     ``One big use of the telescope will be `alert response to 
     transient astrophysical phenomema,''' says project scientist 
     Eileen Ryan. ``An example would be to find the optical 
     counterpart of gamma-ray bursts.'' For that, the telescope 
     would automatically interrupt other observations when it 
     receives signals from Swift, a satellite NASA is supposed to 
     launch in December. The MRO telescope, Ryan adds, will be 
     bigger and will slew faster than other ground-based 
     telescopes currently hunting for GRBs (see Physics Today, 
     July 2002, pages 24 and 25). Mostly, though, the 2.4-meter 
     telescope will be devoted to studying ``small Solar system 
     bodies--asteriods, comets, and Kuiper Belt objects,'' says 
     Ryan. ``We want to use the telescope to ask how fast 
     asteroids are spinning. How big are they? What are their 
     shapes?


                           possible with pork

       What with the MRO being funded directly by Congress, the 
     project often gets labeled as pork. Says Romero, ``Without 
     this type of funding, we would not be able to build it. But 
     we think this is a facility that funding agencies like NASA 
     and NSF will take the opportunity to fund research at.'' And, 
     unusual for a federally funded project, New Mexico Tech and 
     its partners will foot the running costs, estimated at $2 
     million a year. If all goes as planned, the single telescope 
     would see first light in 2005, and the interferometer could 
     be up and running a couple years laters.

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