![]() As the 900-ton instrument platform, fell, the telescope’s support cables also dropped. In a public statement, the NSF said, “Initial findings indicate that the top section of all three of the…telescope’s support towers broke off. In a bid to save the telescope, supporters, including Puerto Rico’s Congressional representative Jenniffer Gonzalez, organized a formal petition to the White House asking the federal government to send the Army Corps of Engineers to evaluate whether Arecibo could be stabilized and ultimately repaired.Īt 6:55 AM EST on Tuesday, the telescope’s 900-ton instrument platform, suspended via cables connected to three towers, fell 450 feet (137 meters) onto already damaged reflector dish. That cable’s collapse occurred three months after the telescope’s reflector dish was damaged in August of this year when an auxiliary cable slid out of its socket in one of the observatory’s towers, leaving the dish with a 100-foot gash and causing the collapse of other cables when it fell.Īn engineering team was in the process of determining the cause of the first cable break and working out a repair plan when the second cable, this time a main one, collapsed onto the dish, further damaging both it and other cables.įollowing the second accident, the National Science Foundation ( NSF), which owns Arecibo, determined that repairing the telescope could cause further catastrophic collapse that posed a threat to the lives of the technicians who would be doing the work. 1, after one of its main cables broke on Nov. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, a world-famous 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope through which major discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics were made, collapsed on the morning of Tuesday, Dec. Photo Credit: Ricardo ARDUENGO / AFP via Getty Images. The radio telescope, which once starred in a James Bond film, collapsed Tuesday when its 900-ton receiver platform fell 450 feet (140 meters) and smashed onto the radio dish below. The telescope also has played astarring role in two popular films: "GoldenEye" (1995) and "Contact"(1997).This aerial view shows the damaged Arecibo Observatory after its instrument platform collapsed onto its reflector dish in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, on December 1, 2020. The Arecibo Observatory was used to discover the first planets observedoutside the solar system, to establish the rotation rate of Mercury and todiscover first pulsar in a binary system. Today it is used for radio and radar astronomy,as well as atmospheric and ionospheric studies. Originally, it was intended tostudy Earth's ionosphere. Air Force under the initiative of CornellProfessor William Gordon and colleagues. Snuggled into a bowl-shaped area in the hills of central Puerto Rico, theradio-radar telescope received a $25 million upgrade in June 1997. The 90-ton, 86-foot diameter domeattached to the end of the 304-foot moveable azimuth arm increases thetelescope's ability to observe the farthest reaches of the universe. The dome above the telescope, which was completed last year, survived thehurricane without damage, Campbell said. The surface of the Arecibo reflector dish is made of 38,800 reflectivealuminum panels, covering an area about the size of 26 football fields.Campbell said that only a few panels on the 16,000 square feet of thedish's surface were lost as the hurricane moved through. Instead, they used Arecibo's dish to recordobservations of high-altitude wind speeds in the hurricane throughoutMonday night, using electrical power from an emergency generator.Īlthough government and communications officials say telephone lines areopen to the island, the NAIC and Cornell News Service were not in contactwith the observatory, as of Wednesday morning. Interestingly, at the time of the hurricane, a group of researchers fromClemson University, Clemson, S.C., and from France were making radarobservations of thunderstorms. There were reports of fallen trees and mud slides around the observatory. ![]() The observatory has 140 employees and visitors. All were "bunkered down" and protected from thehurricane, he said. Telephone contact with the observatorywas lost late Tuesday morning, and full assessment of any damage is not yetavailable.Īs the eye of the hurricane passed just to the south of the telescope, 15people remained at the observatory, according to Donald Campbell, associatedirector of the National Astronomy Ionospheric Center at Cornell Universityin Ithaca, N.Y., which manages the observatory for the National ScienceFoundation (NSF). ![]() The 15 employees and visitors using the observatory, atthe time of the hurricane, are reported safe.Ī small number of panels on the telescope's 1,000-foot diameter reflectorsuffered damage from flying debris. In a telephone conversation early Tuesday observatory personnel alsoindicated that the telescope's newly completed dome apparently escapedwithout damage.
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