Project Phoenix is the world's most sensitive and comprehensive search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It is an effort to detect extraterrestrial civilizations by listening for radio signals that are either being deliberately beamed our way, or are inadvertently transmitted from another planet. Phoenix is the successor to the ambitious NASA SETI program that was cancelled by a budget-conscious Congress in 1993. Phoenix began observations in February, 1995 using the Parkes 210 foot radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia. This is the largest radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.
Following the southern observing campaign, the project turned its attention to northern stars. Appropriately, this phase brought the search back to its roots at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The 140 Foot Telescope is only a short distance from the antenna used by Frank Drake in Project Ozma. Project Phoenix operated in Green Bank from September 1996 through April 1998, using the telescope about 50% of the time. As the primary instrument in Green Bank, the antenna was shared with other astronomers.
Phoenix doesn't scan the whole sky. Rather, it scrutinizes the vicinities of nearby, sun-like stars. Such stars are most likely to host long-lived planets capable of supporting life. We naturally include stars that are known to have planets. There are about one thousand stars targeted for observation by Project Phoenix. All are within 200 light-years distance.
