Stop Lowering Our Sights

Bernard Lovell founded Jodrell Bank under a Labour Government, indeed under the Labour Government, of which it was very much in the spirit. With that caveat, Ameer Kotecha writes:

Why is the UK shutting its iconic space telescope? The news that Jodrell Bank, which hosts the largest telescope in Britain, is to be closed, after the government scrapped funding for the facility, has been greeted with widespread outrage. The Royal Astronomical Society said it was ‘shocked and dismayed’. I’m angry and depressed.

Jodrell Bank is a serious bit of kit. The Lovell Telescope – 76 metres in diameter – is the world’s third-largest, fully steerable dish radio telescope. In the Cold War, it tracked Sputnik. Just last year, GCHQ revealed the secret role Jodrell Bank played in the space race, working with the intelligence agency to intercept signals from satellites, orbital weapons and space probes. The dish continues to conduct world-leading radio astronomy. It has researched black holes and the afterglow of the Big Bang. Just last week, experts demonstrated that the telescope could track space debris.

The mooted closure is reportedly the result of cuts to the government’s physics and astronomy research budget. The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has decided that, when the current funding agreement ends in March 2028, it will stop supporting the entire e-Merlin network – a group of seven UK radio telescopes, including the Lovell at Jodrell Bank. Together, they make up one of the world’s most important networks for astronomical observation. Manchester University, which helps run the observatory, said it would be ‘difficult to sustain’ the telescope without replacement funding.

At present, Jodrell Bank receives just £2.8million a year. That is peanuts. Never mind that the facility represents just 0.03 per cent of UKRI’s annual budget. As a country, we recently spent £100 million on a bat tunnel for HS2. We spend £300 million a day on debt interest. By the time you’ve read this article, Britain will have spent more servicing its national debt than it would cost to keep Jodrell Bank operating for an entire year. We spend £9 million a day on asylum accommodation. But then, who needs to search for alien life when we have illegal aliens arriving on the south coast who need housing?

The decision to close such an iconic facility, which costs such a measly amount to run and which clearly punches so significantly above its weight, provokes genuine bafflement. Perhaps, as one weary soul on X suggested, it had been given the chop because the telescope is white.

But seriously, how can the UK credibly claim to be the best place in the world to do science, let alone want to lead the technologies of the future, while choosing to close internationally respected research infrastructure that costs what amounts to a rounding error? The UK has managed to become a significant global player in radio astronomy thanks to just a handful of globally significant sites, including Jodrell Bank and the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory near Cambridge. That leadership is now seriously imperilled. And how is it that UKRI, an organisation whose budget will reach £10 billion by 2030, cannot find a couple of million for one of its most iconic and important facilities?

When I was growing up, getting my hands on a telescope came second only to a metal detector (so I could go up and down the garden looking for buried treasure). Big telescopes are the sort of thing that capture children’s imagination. If Andy Burnham really wants to encourage kids from working-class communities to dream big and reach for the stars, being able to see them would be a good start.

Of course, the message this sends internationally is pitiful. As China expands its scientific capability and the US continues to invest heavily in frontier science, we are scrapping what assets we have to fund ever more handouts and international aid, including to countries like Pakistan – which has its own space programme.

Like death by a thousand cuts, national decline comes through many small choices that quietly signal a scaling back of ambition. Closing Jodrell Bank is that sort of choice. One waits to see whether Burnham will step in, in response to the backlash – the facility is, after all, just outside Manchester and near his constituency.

We need to decide whether we still want to be the sort of country that dreams big and plays its part in discovering the great questions of life – or just be a welfare state with a country attached. We should stop lowering our sights and instead look to the stars.