Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory Telescope Collapses
A massive radio telescope at Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, one of the world’s largest, collapsed on Tuesday after sustaining severe damage since August, officials said, following 57 years of astronomical discoveries.
The deteriorating telescope’s 900-ton instrument platform, suspended by cables 450 feet (137 metres) above a 1,000-foot-wide (305 metres) bowl-shaped reflector dish, fell on Tuesday morning, the US National Science Foundation said. No injuries were reported, it added.
The telescope, which received radio waves from space, had been used by scientists around the world to hunt for possible signatures of extraterrestrial life, study distant planets and find potentially hazardous asteroids. It also gained fame after pivotal scenes in the 1995 James Bond film “GoldenEye” starring Pierce Brosnan were shot there.
Two cables supporting the reflector dish had broken since August, causing damage and forcing officials to close the observatory as engineering firms retained by the University of Central Florida, which manages the observatory, studied ways to repair the damage.
In November, the engineering reviews led the NSF and the university to conclude that efforts to repair the structure would be too dangerous and that it would have to be demolished.
The NSF said that initial findings indicated that the top section of all three of the telescope’s support towers broke off and that as the instrument platform fell, the telescope’s support cables also plummeted.
