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The news of the telescope’s collapse is a severe blow to scientists who depended on the world’s largest radio telescope until recently. Photo: National Center for Astronomy and Ionosphere, Cornell
The huge and already damaged radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, which played a key role in astronomical discoveries for more than half a century, completely collapsed, the Associated Press and AFP reported, quoted by BTA.
The 900-ton platform fell onto the searchlight from a height of more than 120 meters.
The US National Science Foundation announced in November that the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico would be dismantled because it could collapse after two of its support cables broke. The two cables, which supported 900 tons of instruments on the 305-meter antenna, broke on August 10 and November 6.
The news of the telescope’s collapse is a severe blow to scientists who until recently relied on the world’s largest radio telescope.
“It’s a great loss,” said Carmen Pantoja, an astronomer and professor at the University of Puerto Rico who used the telescope to work on her doctorate. “It was a stage in my life,” he added.
Scientists from around the world have backed a petition to the US authorities to change the decision to close the observatory.
The National Science Foundation said it intends to resume work on the visitor center and operations in intact sections of the observatory, including two LIDAR systems to study the upper atmosphere and ionosphere.
The telescope was built in the 1960s by the United States Department of Defense. It has withstood hurricanes, tropical humidity, and numerous earthquakes.
The telescope was used to track asteroids on their way to Earth, and was used to conduct Nobel Prize-winning research. The asteroid Benu was discovered with the Arecibo Telescope in 1999, and NASA decided to send a spacecraft to study it. The observatory trained students and more than 90,000 people attended each year.
“I am one of those students who visited Arecibo when I was young and inspired me,” said Abel Mendes, a physicist and professor of astrobiology at the University of Puerto Rico. “The world is losing the observatory, but Puerto Rico is losing something else,” he added.
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