NEWS NASA buys into the action on Keck telescope

Washington. The US National Aeronautics stars. Keck may also be able directly to Until recently, the ASEPS programme and Space Administration (NASA) is close image Jupiter-sizeplanets around nearby stars. was known as TOPS (Toward Other Plan­ to signing an agreement with the California An outside advisory group was due to etary Systems). But NASA managers, wor­ consortium that operates the Keck telescope, meet in Washington this week to advise ried that TOPS had become tainted when the largest optical instrument in the world, NASA on how the ASEPS programme Congress cut the Search for Terrestrial In­ under which the space agency will pay one­ should be run. The current plan, according telligence (SETI) programme from the agen­ sixth of the Hawaiian observatory's con­ to Jurgen Rahe of the agency's solar system cy's budget last year, decided to change the struction costs in exchange for an equal exploration division, is to establish a core name. They say they are confident that the proportion of viewing time. team that makes on-going observations, astronomical search for other planets, un­ NASA will use the two 10-metre Keck while funding individual investigators to like SETI, should be safe from political telescopes, the second of which is scheduled conduct specific research projects in attack - or at least as safe as any other to be completed in 1996, for a long-term extrasolar planet detection. project in Washington. Tony Relchhardt programme to search for planets around other stars. One-third of the viewing time on the Keck II telescope will be dedicated to Bavaria bids for key role in biotech that search. The deal, due to be finalized within the Munich. The southern German state of Ba­ donated by the Max Planck Society, Ger­ next several weeks, calls for NASA to pay varia, already known as Germany's Silicon many's principal basic research organi­ $6.8 million this year, with equal amounts Valley, could also become the biotechnology zation. paid out over each of the next five years, to capital of Central Europe, despite the coun­ Martinsried is already a major centre for a total of about $40 million. NASA's invest­ try's traditional hostility to such techniques, biological research, being home to two large ment will be the only government money according to the state's economics minister, Max Planck institutes, several university received by the observatory, which is fi­ Otto Wiesheu. departments, and a large teaching hospital. nanced largely through a private grant from Last week, Wiesheu announced the crea­ Munich's Ludwig Maximilians University theW. M. Keck Foundation. tion of a venture capital fund to help estab­ will be moving its entire chemistry and The first Keck telescope began regular lish new biotechnology companies. The fund pharmacy faculties there in 1999. operations last year. The identical Keck II is forms part of a campaign launched last July The Centre for Biotechnology will rent being built 85 metres away on the peak of to promote new technologies in the state. out laboratory and office space - initially Mauna Kea, the Hawaiian volcano that of­ Bavaria's ministry of economics is sup­ at subsidized rates - to newly established fers astronomers one of the best viewing plying DM150 million (US$97.35 million) to biotechnology companies or research labo­ sites in the world. The telescopes are de­ found a venture capital company for key ratories. signed to be used both independently and in technologies, and it wants German banks to Building will start at the beginning of combination as an optical interferometer, match this amount. DM50 million will be next year, and there will be sufficient space which will greatly improve their joint re­ earmarked for biotechnology. for at least 10 companies to move in when solving power. The new money comes on top ofa DM28- the first phase is completed by the end of the According to Edward Stone, director of million fund, financed almost entirely by year. The second phase will be completed in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the privatization of the Bavarian utilities 1996, offering space for a further 30 chairman of the Californian research con­ companies. The centre will pro­ sortium that manages Keck, it is partly the vide major items of expensive interferometry capability that makes equipment, such as sequencers and NASA's involvement so attractive. The centrifuges, which companies may space agency is spending its own money to share without cost. develop new techniques for optical At present Germany's bio­ interferometry in a test-bed project currently technology sector consists of only being carried out at Mount Palomar in Cali­ 10 small firms. But recent amend­ fornia. Those techniques, to be used in the ments to Germany's tough laws on Astronomical Studies of Extrasolar Plan­ genetic engineering (see Nature etary Systems (ASEPS) programme, will 367, 210; 1994), combined with also benefit other astronomers who are plan­ campaigns by science organiza­ ning to use Keck. tions, have improved the prospects The eventual goal of the ASEPS project for biotechnology. is to detect Earth-sized planets around other "The anti-biotechnology move­ stars, if they exist. But this is likely to Architects' model of new Martlnsried centre. ment in Germany has softened," require space-based instruments. The first says Axel Ullrich, head of molecu­ phase of the programme, using the ground­ company Bayemwerk-AG, which will be lar biology at the Max Planck Institute for based observations from Keck, will concen­ used to build a large biotechnology centre in Biochemistry at Martinsried, who was in­ trate on indirect detection of large planets the state. DM5 million of the building fund volved three years ago in setting up Sugen, around stars that are relatively near. will come from the state budget. a small biotechnology company jointly The presence of planets with the mass of The programme to build up biotechnol­ founded by the Max Planck Society and Uranus or Neptune can be inferred from ogy activities in Bavaria has moved rap- . New York University. spectral or astrometric study of a star, whose idly since Edmund Stoiber, the state's "At the time we could no way think of motion will be affected by the gravitational prime minister, announced the plan to setting it up in Germany," he says. Instead, tug of a nearby massive object. ASEPS will parliament last summer. By autumn, a Sugen based itself in California, but Ullrich also study protoplanetary disks - solar sys­ site in Martinsried near Munich had been says it is now considering installing a spin­ tems in the process of formation - which chosen on which to build a 5,600-square off company in the new Martinsried centre. have already been observed around several metre 'Centre for Biotechnology', on land Alison Abbott NATURE · VOL 371 · 15 SEPTEMBER 1994 189