SETI makes a new start thanks to donations

Although the US government has turned off the funding for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the SETI project can still exist thanks to contributions from sympathizers. So far, $200,000 has been raised.

In April of this year, SETI CEO Tom Pierson announced that the SETI Institute could no longer deploy its core tool in Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. The Allen Telescope Array or ATA, a collection of radio telescopes that scanned the universe for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations, had to be shut down due to lack of money. The institute then started the SetiStars project, asking for contributions from the public in order to bring the ATA back into use.

In exchange for an amount of your choice, individuals and companies receive a mention on the SetiStars page. In the meantime, almost twenty-two hundred donors have given more than two hundred thousand euros. That was the amount it took to wake the ATA from sleep mode. However, use of the telescope in the future will remain dependent on donations: about two and a half million dollars is needed annually. The SetiStars project therefore continues to recruit donors.

The main application of the ATA is the study of so-called Kepler planets. These are exo-planets discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope that may harbor life. More than 1,200 candidate planets have now been identified that can be studied with the array.