RAL worked hand in hand with the SETI Institute during design and prototyping and was the primary designer of the feed, antenna surfaces, beamforming, correlator, and imaging system for radio astronomy observations. The panel for the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey in its report, "Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium", endorsed SETI and recognized the ATA (then called the 1-Hectare Telescope) as an important stepping stone towards the building of the Square Kilometer Array telescope (SKA). The most recent Decadal report recommended ending the US's financial support of the SKA, although US participation in SKA precursors such as MeerKAT, the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array and the Murchison Widefield Array. Although cost estimates of unbuilt projects are always dubious, and the specifications are not identical (conventional telescopes have lower noise temperature, but the ATA has a larger field of view, for example), the ATA has potential promise as a much cheaper radio telescope technology for a given effective aperture. For example, the amount spent on the first ATA-42 phase, including technology development, is roughly one third of the cost of a new copy of a Deep Space Network 34 m antenna of similar collecting area. Similarly, the estimated total cost of building the remaining 308 dishes was estimated () at about $41 million. This is about two times cheaper than the $85 million cost of the last large radio astronomy antenna built in the US, the Green Bank Telescope, of similar collecting area. The contractor filed for a $29 million overrun, but only $4 million of this was allowed. The ATA aspires to be among the world's largest and fastest observing instruments, and to permit astronomers to search many different target stars simultaneously. If completed as originally envisioned, it will be one of the largest and most powerful telescopes in the world. Since its inception, the ATA has been a development tool for astronomical interferometer technology (specifically, for the Square Kilometer Array). The ATA was originally planned to be constructed in four stages, ATA-42, ATA-98, ATA-206 and ATA-350, each number representing the number of dishes in the array at a given time. (See Table 1). The ATA is planned to comprise 350 dishes with a diameter of 6 m each. Regular operations with 42 dishes started on 11 October 2007. Funding for building additional antennas is currently being sought by the SETI Institute from various sources, including the United States Navy, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), National Science Foundation (NSF) and private donors.