In November 2007, The Planetary Society urged the U.S. Congress to prevent the Arecibo Observatory from closing because of insufficient funding, since its radar contributes greatly to the accuracy of predictions of asteroid impacts on the Earth. The Planetary Society believes that continued operation of the observatory will reduce the cost of mitigation (that is, deflection of a near-Earth asteroid on collision to Earth), should that be necessary. Also in November of that year "The New York Times" described the consequences of the budget cuts at the site. In July 2008, the British newspaper "The Daily Telegraph" reported that the funding crisis, due to federal budget cuts, was still very much alive. The SETI@home program is using the telescope as a primary source for ET research. The program urges people to send a letter to their political representatives in support of full federal funding of the observatory. The NAIC received $3.1 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This was used for basic maintenance and for a second, much smaller, antenna to be used for very long baseline interferometry, new Klystron amplifiers for the planetary radar system and student training. This allotment was an increase of about 30 percent over the FY-2009 budget. However, the FY-2010 funding request by NSF was cut by $1.2 million (−12.5%) over the FY-2009 budget, in light of their continued plans to reduce funding. The 2011 NSF budget was reduced by a further $1.6 million, −15% compared to 2010, with a further $1.0 million reduction projected by FY-2014. Starting in FY-2010, NASA restored its historical support by contributing $2.0 million per year for planetary science, particularly the study of near-Earth objects, at Arecibo. NASA implemented this funding through its Near Earth Object Observations program. NASA increased its support to $3.5 million per year in 2012. Furthermore, in 2010 the NSF issued a call for new proposals for the management of NAIC starting in FY-2012. On May 12, 2011, the agency informed Cornell University that, as of October 1, 2011, it would no longer be the operator of the NAIC and the Arecibo Observatory. At that time, Cornell transferred its operations to SRI International, along with two other managing partners, Universities Space Research Association and Universidad Metropolitana de Puerto Rico, with a number of other collaborators. Upon the award of the new cooperative agreement for NAIC management and operation, NSF also decertified NAIC as a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC), with the stated goal of providing the NAIC with greater freedom to establish broader scientific partnerships and pursue funding opportunities for activities beyond the scope of those supported by NSF.