Jodrell Bank Observatory, which has housed the UK's most powerful telescope for nearly seven decades, faces permanent closure after the UK Research and Innovation agency decided to cut its £2.8 million annual budget. The funding body justified the decision as necessary to achieve financial sustainability, citing escalating laboratory research costs and prioritising projects with greater long-term commercial and strategic potential.

The decision threatens 28 direct positions and disrupts research for approximately 3,000 scientists who use the facility. Observatory officials and the scientific community have condemned the choice as scientifically unsound, and leadership committed to challenging the decision and exploring alternative funding sources. The announcement forms part of a wider contraction in UK astronomy, including the country's withdrawal from the James Clark Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and a twenty percent reduction in support for the Vera Rubin Telescope project in Chile.