Knocking on Heaven's Door: Exploring Armenia's Abandoned Orgov Telescope
Two hours by car from Yerevan, nestled amongst grazing cattle and the farmers who tend to them, is the abandoned remains of a telescope which once searched for signs of life beyond our world. The Orgov Radio-Optical Telescope, tells a story of scientific ambition, geopolitical rivalry, and the enduring human quest to understand our place in the cosmos.
Space exploration was initially a practical concern: rocket technology solved the problem of sending huge nuclear payloads over long distances. But the Space Race soon evolved into something of much greater symbolic significance. Space became the dramatic arena for an ideological and intellectual struggle between communism and capitalism. If the Soviets won the Space Race, they would win the Cold War.
The Space Race kicked off on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite. This tiny aluminium sphere, no bigger than a beach ball, orbited the Earth for three weeks before its batteries died. The launch sent shockwaves through the United States. NASA was born less than a year later.
As the race heated up, both superpowers began pouring astronomical sums into their space programs. In 1966, at the height of the Apollo program, NASA's budget was 4.4% of the entire U.S. federal budget. Soviet and American scientists had almost unlimited budgets when it came to space research. Their primary objective was not politics, but the exploration of other worlds. Earthy ideologies like communism and capitalism held no pull in their orbits.
At the peak of the Cold War in 1971, 44 of the world's most renowned scientists from the US and the USSR, including Carl Sagan, came together in Byurakan, a small mountainous Armenian village. They spent four days discussing the challenges of communicating with intelligent life beyond Earth at the inaugural extraterrestrial intelligence conference. This gathering was remarkable not only for its subject matter but for the cooperation it represented between Cold War rivals. It laid the groundwork for future international collaborations in space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
It was in this climate of cosmic exploration that Armenian scientist Paris Herouni proposed a new radio telescope to capture and decode signals from space. Herouni's vision faced opposition from what he called the "scientific mafia" of Moscow, but his persistence paid off. Construction of the 54-metre Orgov Radio-Optical Telescope began in 1975 and took a decade to complete.
When the telescope finally became operational in 1986, it immediately proved its worth, capturing a radio-flare from the Eta Gemini star within minutes of activation. It quickly gained a reputation as one of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world, a crown jewel in the Soviet scientific arsenal.
However, history had other plans. The breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent wars in the Caucasus threw the fate of many large Soviet-funded projects into uncertainty. Yet, unlike many scientific facilities that fell into immediate disrepair, Herouni managed to keep the Orgov telescope operational until his death in 2008, a testament to his dedication and the instrument's significance.
By 2012, the telescope had fallen silent, its massive dish no longer scanning the skies. Plans for restoration surfaced in the early 2000s, but the price tag of $200-250 million meant little progress was made
Today, Herouni's niece, Arevik Sargsyan, is leading an ambitious drive to restart the telescope. The path to restoration has been fraught with political hurdles. After several back-and-forth discussions, Sargsyan came close to reaching an agreement to restart the telescope with Armenia's previous government. But as the 2018 revolution installed a new administration, negotiations had to begin again. Hopefully one day soon, it will once again turn its gaze to the heavens, and help answer the age-old question: are we alone in the universe?
