The Lovell telescope, which has been at the cutting edge of science for nearly 70 years, will fall silent in 2028 unless alternative funding can be found — a decision scientists have branded “heartbreaking” and “scientifically misguided”.
All scientific observations at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire are expected to cease on 1 April 2028 after the UK Research and Innovation agency (UKRI) cut its annual £2.8 million budget, the BBC understands. The observatory, first established in 1945, pioneered radio astronomy and played a pivotal role during the Cold War, monitoring Soviet missiles at the height of nuclear tensions. It earned Unesco World Heritage status in 2019.
“Jodrell Bank Observatory loses funding, observations to end April 2028 unless alternative funding found.”
The funding cut is part of a broader 2.7% reduction to astronomy, nuclear and particle physics research over the next four years. UKRI, which has an annual budget of just under £10bn, said it had to make “tough, but necessary, decisions” because planned research costs for physics and the running of its labs had escalated. Prof Michele Dougherty, executive chair of UKRI’s science and technology branch, said: “After listening to our community we have protected core discovery research. However, the situation does require some tough, but necessary, decisions. These are never easy choices, but we have made what we feel are the right decisions to bring… a sustainable financial position by 2029/30.”
Twenty-eight jobs are at risk at Jodrell Bank directly, but its closure would also affect the work of nearly 3,000 scientists who use its network of telescopes for studies of distant galaxies and training future astronomers. The impact extends beyond Cheshire: the UK will no longer participate in research at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, which scientists use to image supermassive black holes, and UKRI has cut funding for two UK instruments on the Extremely Large Telescope being built in Chile to search for signs of life on other Earth-like worlds. There will also be a 20% cut in funding for UK participation in the Vera Rubin Telescope in Chile, a project launched only last year that is creating the first movie of the Universe.
Jodrell Bank’s Lovell telescope has been a symbol of British scientific achievement for decades, but without a last-minute rescue, one of the UK’s most iconic instruments will be silenced — and a generation of astronomers left untrained.