Washington

Looking up: the dispute about cost overruns at the Green Bank telescope is now over. Credit: MIKE BAILEY/NRAO/AUI

An arbitrator has ruled that the government should pay only $4 million towards cost overruns encountered by the contractor that built a huge radiotelescope at Green Bank, West Virginia.

The decision — in the face of claims from the contractor for $29 million on top of its $55 million contract to build the world's largest fully steerable, single-dish telescope — was good news for US astronomers, who feared the settlement would eat into the astronomy budget at the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The contractor, Radiation Systems Incorporated — later part of the Comsat Corporation — began work in 1990, with completion planned for 1994. But the telescope achieved first light on 22 August 2000 and was accepted by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), on behalf of the NSF, on 13 October.

In 1998, Comsat sought a further $29 million, arguing that NRAO and its managing contractor, Associated Universities Incorporated (AUI), had forced it to perform extra work.

“This matter is finally resolved, and we can now focus our efforts on making Green Bank a world-class telescope,” says Paul Vanden Bout, NRAO's director.

Three days after it achieved first light, the GBT was opened by its original sponsor, senator Robert Byrd (Democrat, West Virginia), whose name it now carries.

But even as AUI and NSF officials worried about the possibility of an expensive settlement, Byrd discreetly slipped $15 million into the NSF's budget bill for this year to cover astronomy facility costs, including $8 million specifically for the GBT.