The Alamogordo Daily News reports:
The Sunspot Observatory is temporarily closed due to a security issue at the facility that's located 17 miles south of Cloudcroft in the Sacramento Mountains Friday, an Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) spokeswoman Shari Lifson said.
"The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy who manages the facility is addressing a security issue at this time," Lifson said. "We have decided to vacate the facility at this time as precautionary measure. It was our decision to evacuate the facility." She said she cannot comment on the specifics of the security issue.
[...] Otero County Sheriff Benny House said the Otero County Sheriff's Office was asked to standby. "The FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] is refusing to tell us what's going on," House said. "We've got people up there (at Sunspot) that requested us to standby while they evacuate it. Nobody would really elaborate on any of the circumstances as to why. The FBI were up there. What their purpose was nobody will say."
He said he has a lot of unanswered questions about what occurred at Sunspot. "But for the FBI to get involved that quick and be so secretive about it, there was a lot of stuff going on up there," House said. "There was a Blackhawk helicopter, a bunch of people around antennas and work crews on towers but nobody would tell us anything."
Why would the FBI order a sunspot research facility closed, but be unable (or unwilling) to give a reason?
Also at Popular Mechanics, Vice, and Gizmodo.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Friday September 14 2018, @12:02PM
Pull the NOTAMs for Holloman AFB they are doing heavy construction around the runways installing or removing god knows what probably involving the national RADAR testing facility at that site. Once its all under radomes and outta sight it'll be all good?
Perhaps the reason all the hiking paths and stuff like that nearby but within sight of Holloman are being ignored is some academic from China Fs around with 10 tons of monitoring gear at an observatory that might or might not be pointed at Holloman, and "of course" thats normal for academics to be unmonitored on a research lab doing god knows what with mysterious equipment, whereas hauling all that radar monitoring crap to an observation deck along a hiking trail would be severe WTF for all passers-by.