14 DAY TRIAL // After announcing the total withdraw of the fundings for two of the best land-based space observatories, Gemini North and Gemini South, so that UK funding money could go to other areas of science, the Science and Technology Facility Council seems to have changed its mind and decided to give access, once again, to UK astronomers to the Gemini facilities. UK astronomers were banned from using both Gemini observatories last month.
Both are just reaching the hight of their exploitation potential, after nearly 15 years of development; Gemini South Observatory is located in the Chilean Andes while Gemini North is located in Hawaii. According to STFC, the UK is contributing with about a quarter of the funding for the observatories, totaling 4 million pounds a year, even though they are administered by an international collaboration.
The withdraw of the UK fundings naturally affects both sides, as the Gemini observatory would be unable to make the scheduled upgrades and the UK astronomers no longer have access to the world's biggest north observatory. It now seems that the STFC will continue to fund the Gemini complex with one condition, namely the reduction of its investment. Similar attempts to negotiate have been made last year by the STFC, when they have proposed to the Gemini administration board that the UK withdraw from the partnership, but still receive partial access to Gemini North until 2012.
The request was immediately turned down, and STFC had no choice but face total withdraw of the funding and impose a restriction for UK astronomers willing to conduct observations at the Gemini facilities. Now, STFC says that the funding will continue at least until the summer of this year and it is trying to find alternative funding methods to keep the observatory open for UK astronomers.
Some speculate that the UK may imply a policy that involves selling the time on the Gemini South telescope, in order to fund the north observatory, as the UK astronomers can still get access to another relatively large telescope in the southern hemisphere, represented by Paranal Observatory, but have no large norther observatory to view the northern areas of the sky.
It is said the the latest decision was determined by a series of consultations between the STFC and the Astronomy and Nuclear Physics Science committee, or PPan for short, which seems to have high expectancies for the programs run at the Gemini facilities, as the decision taken by STFC in January spawned a violent reaction. Nonetheless, the possibility of UK funding withdrawal from Gemini has higher consequences for the development of Gemini. What was supposed to be the Precision Radial-Velocity Spectrometer for a future Gemini site quickly turned to dust at the hearing of a potential funding withdrawal, situation that will probably be encountered by a series of similar other projects.
Further still, STFC will need to close a series of scientific programs in order to make room for others, a potential critical situation for science and the thousands of people working on them.