Scientists at Puerto Rico's Arecibo Telescope, run by Cornell University, found a rare asteroid last month with two moons only seven million miles from Earth - a breakthrough for a facility in the midst of serious budget woes.

Michael Nolan, research associate and head of radar astronomy at Arecibo, said the facility was the first in the world to find extrasolar planets and to develop a three dimensional map of how galaxies are distributed in the universe. Still, NASA completely cut off funding to the facility in 2004, and the National Science Foundation has refused to step up its funding in the meantime.

Nolan said Arecibo's budget is now $12.5 million per year, but it will be cut 10 percent in 2009, and 40 percent by 2011.

"There's no way we can operate with that amount of money unless we can find someone else to give us some," he said.

Donald Campbell, astronomy professor at Cornell University, said funding cuts might cause the shut-down of Arecibo's planetary radar program, which discovered the triple asteroid.

"The only really identifiable program that you could shut down and save money, short of shutting the whole telescope down, is probably the planetary radar program, because it makes use of large amounts of power and big transmitters and generators," Campbell said.

Nolan said the bill would help Arecibo remain operational.

He said a shut down of the telescope would hurt Cornell's research abilities because the telescope is a major source of information for the astronomical community. He also said he would not be able to use the information the telescope provides in his classes anymore.

"It would make me a less interesting lecturer ... ," he said. "I talk to the class about some of the things we do and show pictures of the asteroid."

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Cal., a member of the House Committee on Science and Technology, has co-sponsored a bill in a bi-partisan effort to appeal to NASA and the NSF to keep Arecibo running. He is sponsoring the bill with Luis Fortuna, resident commissioner of Puerto Rico, a nonvoting member of the House of Representatives.

Tara Setmayer, communications director for Rohrabacher, said the bill will ask for the NSF to fully fund Arecibo, allowing scientists to continue their work in radio astronomy and solar system research. It does not specify exactly how much funding should be set aside.

The bill also calls for cooperation between NASA and the NSF.

Daniel Lamb, congressional representative for Rep. Maurice Hinchey D-N.Y., said Hinchey is one of the 20 members of Congress who have co-sponsored the bill, which has been in the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics since October.

Nolan said Arecibo receives some of the lowest funding compared to other observatories in the U.S. The National Optical Astronomy Observatories in Arizona got more than $38 million last year, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico received more than $44 million last year.

Nolan said the Arecibo telescope gathers data rather than taking pictures of the asteroid. He said scientists bounce radio waves off the asteroid and then use the data they obtain to find out the rock's mass, density, orbit and other features.

"You send out a narrow pulse and first it bounces off the front of the asteroid," he said. "And then a few microseconds later it bounces off a piece farther away, and so we can sort of patch that back together and make these images."

Cornell research associate Ellen Howell said as the asteroid spins, astronomers make a two-dimensional image of it on their computers.

Howell said Arecibo's capabilities are unique, because it can react quickly to new discoveries by approving urgent proposals for additional observation.

"Sometimes in as little as three or four hours, we can change the schedule, get all the right people assembled and get the telescope going," Howell said.

Howell said she and her colleagues had been planning to look at the near-Earth asteroid, known as 2001 SN263, for a while. She and other astronomers thought it was simply a large rock and did not realize it has two moons.

"We didn't know there was anything special about it until we got the first images," she said.

Nolan said the main rock in the asteroid's system is 2.7 km in diameter, or about 1.5 miles. Howell said the largest moon is half that size, and the smaller moon is 1000 m in diameter.

Howell said the triple asteroid is the closest one to Earth astronomers have ever found, though they have seen binary asteroids, with only one moon, close to Earth before.

The discovery raises many questions for Howell and her fellow astronomers, such as whether this triple system is stable and whether it formed as a three-part asteroid or picked up the third rock later.

Setmayer said Rohrabacher believes maintaining Arecibo is vital to national security, since its use of radar makes it uniquely suited for finding potentially dangerous near-Earth objects.

"It doesn't look for things, it tracks them, and it tracks them with a level of precision that no other telescope can do," Setmayer said.

Howell said the triple asteroid poses no threat to Earth, but studying it might give scientists a chance to learn more about the potential hazards of asteroids.

"Studying the asteroid may also help astronomers learn more about the earth's origins," Nolan said. "The reason we care about this is, these are the things that made the planets," he said. "To understand how the Earth formed, it helps to know what it's made of."