I have been wondering whatever became of The Planetary Society's Project BETA Radio SETI program, begun ten years ago, ever since the 84-foot Harvard radio dish broke and fell during a windstorm in March of 1999.

The TPS Web site has an article from 2000 describing and showing a repair job undeway:

http://seti.planetary.org/BETA/default.html

But when I went to Harvard University's Oak Ridge Observatory site, I found out that the BETA dish has since been "retired":

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/oir/OakRidge/oak.ridge.html

I also learned from there, to my surprise, that the 61-inch telescope that had conducted their Optical SETI program since 1998 has also been retired!

Why didn't the TPS or Harvard or someone inform us about this?

A few years back, TPS began a new Optical SETI project with much fanfare. I looked on their Web site but could find no new updates on it since 2002 (with lots of broken links here), when it was supposed to have its "first light":

http://seti.planetary.org/OsetiConstruction2.htm

The latest version of their Optical SETI page also reveals no recent news on this project:

http://planetary.org/programs/projects/set...tical_searches/

So what is happening with what is supposed to be the "largest Optical SETI project east of the Mississippi"? Is it still being built? Is it up and running? Has it too been abandonded? Has the TPS been slipping away from SETI ever since Carl Sagan's passing, as I suspect?

I and many other have supported this project financially as well as verbally, so I would hope to at least know what progress is being made - and why BETA was abandonded. Why didn't TPS at least transfer it to another radio telescope?