{
  "abstract": "Breakthrough Listen (BL), launched in July 2015 with a 10-year, \\$100M commitment from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, is the most comprehensive search for technosignatures ever conducted. This paper reviews the program's first decade from the facilities and instrumentation perspective: the digital backends and data recorders, the signal-processing pipelines, the data archive, and the observatory partnerships that made the science possible. We organize the decade into three architectural eras. In Generation 1 (2016--2019), BL deployed packetized raw-voltage wideband recorders on the 100-m Green Bank Telescope and the 64-m Parkes telescope, enabling targeted surveys of thousands of nearby stars across $\\sim$0.7--8 GHz. In a network-expansion phase (2020--2023), BL extended its instrumentation to partner facilities including the Sardinia Radio Telescope and international LOFAR stations, and developed verification frameworks that proved essential when the program's highest-profile signal candidates emerged. Since 2023, BL has operated in a fully commensal era: Ethernet-based, commodity-GPU backends riding on routine observatory operations: COSMIC at the Karl G. Jansky VLA, a revived Allen Telescope Array with deployed real-time deep-learning pipelines, and an autonomous multi-beam commensal survey at MeerKAT (BLUSE; $>$1.2 million pointings since mid-2022). Over the decade, capturing data at ever higher rates forced a systematic approach to compression and archiving; the storage estate grew to $\\sim$42 PB of capacity ($\\sim$31 PB in use) across seven systems on four continents by March 2026. We conclude with engineering lessons (commodity hardware over bespoke hardware, open data as a first-class requirement, commensal science as backend validation, and verification frameworks built before they are needed) and with the outlook for SKA-era commensal technosignature science.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.07482",
  "author_total": 2,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "David H. E. MacMahon"
    },
    {
      "name": "Daniel J Czech"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/cb4p6v1ypbpf2.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.07482",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "cb4p6v1ypbpf2",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.07482",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "astro-ph.IM"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3103|Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7220964749",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.07482",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-05",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/cb4p6v1ypbpf2.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:27:22Z",
      "native_id": "2610.07482",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.07482"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "arxiv:astro-ph.IM",
      "subfield": "instrumentation-methods"
    }
  ],
  "title": "The First Decade of Breakthrough Listen",
  "title_text": "The First Decade of Breakthrough Listen",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:27:22Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/cb4p6v1ypbpf2",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}