1,000-foot radio telescope and radar at Arecibo, 

 Puerto Rico, a facility operated by Cornell Uni- 

 versity: highly steerable radio telescopes, from 36 

 to 300 feet in diameter, operated by the National 

 Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) under 

 another consortium of universities. Associated 

 Universities, Incorporated (AUI); and an array of 

 optical telescopes at three facilities under still a 

 third university consortium, the Association of 

 Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). 



At Arecibo, visiting users currently are getting 

 68 percent of the observing time. At NRAO's 

 main facility in Greenbank, W. Va., the policy is 

 to give visitors at least 60 percent of the observ- 

 ing time; at latest review they were actually get- 

 ting 71 percent. NRAO's Very Large Array 

 (VLA), under construction at Soccoro, N. Mex., 

 eventually will consist of 27 antennas, each an 82- 

 foot dish that can be moved as desired along three 

 radiating sets of tracks, each about 13 miles long. 

 Used in this way, they will have the collecting 

 power of a di* 426 feet in diameter but the re- 

 solving power of one about 25 miles in diameter. 



AURA'S oldest FFRDC is the Kitt Peak Na- 

 tional Observatory (KPNO), which includes the 

 world's largest solar telescope, a solar vacuum 

 telescope, and several other optical telescopes 

 including one 4 meters in diameter, which in this 

 country is second only to the 5-meter telescope at 

 Mount Palomar. NRAO has a 36-foot millimeter- 

 wave radio telescope at Kitt Peak and there are 

 some university telescopes there also. AURA also 

 operates the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observ- 

 atory (CTIO) in the Chilean Andes, which is 

 equipped with several telescopes, including a 4- 

 meter one that was funded jointly by NSF and the 

 Ford Foundation. At both KPNO and CTIO visit- 

 ing observers get 60 percent of the observing 

 time, and at CTIO up to 10 percent of the total 

 may be used by visiting scientists from Central 

 and South America.*^ The newest of the NSF 

 FFRDC's is the Sacramento Peak Observatory 

 (SPO) in Sunspot, N. Mex., recently transferred 

 to NSF from the Air Force; AURA is the interim 

 manager. 



All the instruments at SPO are designed for 

 observing the sun; the large vacuum tower tele- 

 scope and a 40-centimeter coronagraph, the larg- 

 est in the United States, are the most spectacular. 

 Because an operating contract has not yet been 

 negotiated it is not known how much use of the 

 facilities will be shared with visiting scientists. 

 NCAR's HAO constructed at least two of the 

 coronagraphs at SPO and uses one jointly with 

 SPO staff. NASA also has a solar spectrograph at 



SPO, which is used to support operations in 

 space. '^ 



The contractor selects the director of each 

 FFRDC, subject to the approval of the Director 

 of NSF, who also approves the directors' salaries. 

 Programs are developed on a long-range basis by 

 the laboratory/observatory and the program mana- 

 gers at NSF. A submission is made annually to 

 NSF for the work planned for the coming year in 

 accordance with the program developed. The pro- 

 gram manager has final approval for inclusion in 

 the NSF budget. The contractor has considerable 

 discretion within the bounds of agreed objectives. 

 When the program manager plans to fund an in- 

 vestigator who will be using a field facility, this 

 arrangement is usually negotiated in advance. 

 Contractual business must be conducted between 

 NSF and the contractor; scientific dialogue is 

 ongoing at lower levels. 



Smithsonian Institution 



The Smithsonian estimates that 93 percent of its 

 $31 million Federal obligations for basic research 

 in 1977 is intramural. Most of this research is 

 done either at or from the establishment in 

 Washington, D.C., which houses the national 

 collections. The collections themselves are the 

 working material for a great deal of this research. 

 The National Zoo also has a breeding station in 

 Virginia. The Smithsonian's largest outside labo- 

 ratory is the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observa- 

 tory (SAO), which is housed in the Center for 

 Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass., a joint ven- 

 ture of the Smithsonian and Harvard University. 

 The Director of SAO is also the director of the 

 Center and is selected by the Secretary with the 

 approval of the Harvard Board of Regents and the 

 Smithsonian Board of Regents. 



Other Smithsonian laboratories are the Tropical 

 Research Institute in the Canal Zone, the Radia- 

 tion Biological Laboratory in Rockville, Md., and 

 the Chesapeake Bay Center for Environmental 

 Studies, also in Maryland. Each of these has a 

 director selected and appointed by the Secretary, 

 although all such appointments are referred to the 

 Regents, as are other important matters. The 

 Regents are the Chief Justice of the United States 

 (Chancellor), the Vice President of the United 

 States, three members of the Senate, three mem- 

 bers of the House of Representatives, and nine 

 citizen members. 



"'".S;icranionlo Peak Observalory." a visitors' pamphlet 

 published hy the Observalory, 1977. 



''l.ynds. B. T.. The Nulloihil OhservnloriemAVRA: \97h). 

 250 BASIC RESEARCH IN AGENCY LABORATORIES AND FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTERS 



