Published December 1993 — Download PDF of the original newspaper column
Byrd's-Eye View By U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd An Ear to the Skies
Sometime during the next several weeks, motors in the base of the Green Bank Telescope will be activated, providing the first test of the equipment that will rotate the IS-million pound listening device as it searches the skies in its quest to unravel the mysteries of deep outer space. The upcoming test will mark an important milestone in the rebirth of the Pocahontas County telescope, an ultra-modem instrument which replaces a smaller, less technologically advanced device that collapsed in November, 1988. The loss of the 300-foot radio telescope at Green Bank five years ago was felt far beyond its remote eastern West Virginia home. Scientists across the country gleaned valuable data from the depths of outer space for more than 25 years, thanks to the telescope. But from that loss, West Virginia soon will gain a state-of-the-art radio telescope that will give our state a continuing and larger role in the scientific community's effort to learn about the universe. Shortly after the radio telescope collapsed, I added $75 million to a federal funding bill to build a new telescope. The new telescope will be equipped with an innovative laser ranging system--now being developed at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank--that will be able to detect any sag in the telescope structure caused by gravity or wind. Although the telescope dish is the size of two football fields, it will have the precision of a fine watch. For example, if or when the sensors detect that some part of the telescope is out of alignment by even the thickness of a human hair, motors on the surface of the telescope--some 2,300 of them--will move it back to the correct position. Another key element of the Green Bank Telescope --sensitive radio receivers that will amplify the faint radio signals collected by the telescope--is now being designed and built at Green Bank. Tests on the first of the many radio receivers that will be included on the telescope have been successfully completed. According to the National Science Foundation, which serves as the funding agency for Green Bank operations, the new telescope should be completed sometime in 1995. With its completion, the new Green Bank Telescope will begin scanning the skies for clues to the universe, giving West Virginia a unique place in mankind's continuing search for knowledge in the stars. December 15, 1993