As historical landmarks go, Site 515 isn’t much to look at, assuming you can even find it. An abandoned research station located in a remote area of the Foothills, the site has been overtaken by a thicket of weeds and brush, and rusting metal parts are scattered among its remaining dish antennas and rundown service buildings. But when the University’s fire inspector declared the place unsafe recently and called for clean-up or demolition, Site 515 came back on the radar.
Erected in the late 1950s, the site housed an array of antennas used by electrical engineering professor (now emeritus) Ronald Bracewell and other researchers in Stanford’s Space, Telecommunications and Radioscience Laboratory to map microwaves emitted from the sun. It attracted several eminent radio astronomers at the time, some of whom etched their names on the concrete platforms, still intact, where 10-foot-diameter antennas were mounted. NASA used the solar weather map provided by Site 515 during the Apollo moon landing. The experiments ended in the 1970s and the site has been little used since.
After the fire inspector’s report last fall, Channing Robertson, senior associate dean for faculty and academic affairs in the School of Engineering, intervened to stop Site 515’s destruction. A fund-raising effort was launched to buy time for a plan that would keep the site intact, and Robertson has asked for ideas about ways to commemorate the research that went on there.
Supporters want to preserve the building housing the radiotelescope controls and the five remaining dish antennas, each 60 feet in diameter. Friends of the Bracewell Observatory Association, working with professor of electrical engineering Umran Inan, are working on a proposal that would restore the antennas for both University and public use. The University will decide this summer whether to keep the facility or demolish it.
