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By AFP 
10h ago
By Ricardo Arduengo, with Ben Sheppard in Washington
Arecibo, Puerto Rico – Puerto Rico’s famous Arecibo Observatory telescope, which once starred in a James Bond movie, collapsed Tuesday when its 900-ton receiving platform sank 450 feet (140 meters) into the satellite dish below. .
Engineers had recently warned of the massive structure’s decrepit state, and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) announced last month that it would be dismantled.
Two of the cables holding the rig over the radio dish, which measures 1,000 feet (300 meters) in diameter, broke this year and the structure finally gave way Tuesday morning.
The photographs showed clouds of dust rising into the air and the remnants of telescope instruments strewn across the site.
“We can confirm that the platform was down and that we have no reports of injuries,” NSF spokesman Rob Margetta told AFP.
The telescope was one of the largest in the world and has been a tool for many astronomical discoveries since the 1960s, as well as being famous for its spectacular scale and setting.
An action scene from the Bond movie “GoldenEye” with Pierce Brosnan took place high above the plate, and in “Contact,” an astronomer played by Jodie Foster used the observatory in her search for alien signals.
‘Sad day for astronomy’
Abel Méndez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo, said the platform fell sometime before 8:00 am (1200 GMT), describing it as “a total disaster.”
“Many students are trained in astronomy at the observatory, they are inspired like me to pursue a career in science and astronomy,” he said.
“The loss of the Arecibo telescope is a great loss for the world, but it is more of a loss for Puerto Rico. It is an icon for our island.”
The telescope was in operation for 57 years until August, and scientists had lobbied the NSF to reverse its decision to close the site.
In August, an auxiliary cord failed after slipping from its socket on one of the towers and left a 100-foot cut in the plate below.
Engineers were evaluating the damage and how to repair it when a main cable connected to the same tower broke on November 6.
Before Tuesday, a controlled demolition had been planned to avoid an unexpected collapse.
Among the telescope’s successes was the 1992 discovery of the first exoplanet, a planet outside the solar system, and in 1981 it helped produce the first radar maps of the surface of Venus.
The observatory’s website said the telescope was “a leading global radio astronomy, solar system radar and atmospheric physics facility, providing highly relevant data to support discovery, innovation and advancement of science.”
“What a sad day for astronomy and planetary science around the world and one of the most iconic telescopes of all time,” tweeted Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate.
The site hoped that the decommissioning plan would preserve other parts of the observatory for future research and education.
“As we move forward, we will look for ways to help the scientific community and maintain our strong relationship with the people of Puerto Rico,” the NSF said in a tweet.
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