Arecibo telescope collapses, ending 57-year run

Arecibo telescope collapses, ending 57-year run

3 years ago
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http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/arecibo-telescope-collapses-ending-57-year-run

A second cable break on 7 November tore through the Arecibo telescope’s dish panels and brought the suspended instrument platform to the verge of collapse.

The Arecibo Observatory is gone. Its 900-ton instrument platform, suspended above a dish in the karst hills of Puerto Rico, collapsed this morning, at about 8 a.m. local time, says Ramon Lugo, director of the Florida Space Institute at the University of Central Florida, which manages the 57-year-old radio telescope for the National Science Foundation (NSF). On 19 November, NSF decided to decommission the observatory following two cable breaks that put the platform on the brink of collapse. But in the end, it couldn’t survive long enough for a controlled demolition.