The Cambridge Radio Observatory Committee (CAMROC) was convened in the fall of 1965 by S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Julius A. Stratton, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Nathan M. Pusey, president of Harvard University, to plan for an advanced radio and radar astronomy facility. The committee was co-chaired by Jerome B. Wiesner, then dean of the School of Science at MIT and A. Edward Purcell of Harvard University. In the summer of 1967 the CAMROC institutions--Harvard, the Smithsonian, MIT, and Lincoln Laboratory--formed the Northeast Radio Observatory Corporation (NEROC) as a non-profit corporation to carry forward the activities of CAMROC, and to own and operate the proposed radio and radar observatory. They were joined by nine other institutions: Boston University, Brandeis University, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the Polytechnic Institute of New York, the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the University of Massachusetts, the University of New Hampshire, and Yale University.

NEROC's proposals to the National Science Foundation for the new observatory were not funded, and NEROC directed its attention to the Haystack Research Facility, with its 120 foot tall antenna, located in Westford, Mass., and operated by MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. In 1969, with the apporval of the U.S. Air Force and Joint Advisory Committee for Lincoln Laboratory, an agreement to transfer Haystack was signed by MIT and NEROC. The facility was renamed the Haystack Observatory, operated by NEROC and administered by MIT. MIT became Haystack's official owner in 1971. The director of Haystack reports to the provost of MIT.