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For nearly 60 years, the 305-meter-high Arecibo telescope contributed to various space discoveries, including neutron stars, but a few weeks ago it was announced that the telescope would be dismantled due to safety concerns.
According to the NSF American Space Foundation, a 900-ton instrument fell onto the dish just over 100 meters below.
The instrument was supported by cables through three towers, and the tops of the three towers appear to have been broken.
“We regret this situation, but we are happy that no one was injured,” NSF chief Sethuraman Panchanathan said in a press release.
Shantanu Naidu is radar scientists at the JPL research center of the US space agency NASA. He has visited the Arecibo facility several times, the last two years ago, and used their data in his research.
– There are many memories related to my visits there. Missing, he says.
He himself describes it as shocked when he heard the news of the collapse.
– It was the most powerful telescope to characterize asteroids, says and continues:
– We looked at the asteroids that came close to Earth, what shape they were, what they were made of, if they had satellites around them and things like that.
Many data The facility has been used by researchers, especially at NASA. To some extent, Arecibo will be replaced by the Goldstone complex in the Mojave Desert, California.
– Although we do not actively use the telescope, we use the data it collected on asteroids. We could look for possible impacts and their trajectories. It was a very important facility, Naidu says.
Areciboteleskopet i November.
Photo: Ricardo Arduengo / AFP
In August, one of the radio telescope cables came loose, but the others were deemed capable of supporting the weight. When another outbreak occurred in November, it was assessed that they were probably in worse condition than expected. NSF later announced that all unauthorized telescope personnel would stay away from the site.
“We knew this was a risk, but it’s still heartbreaking to see,” Elizabeth Klonoff, deputy director of research at the University of Central Florida, who ran the facility, said in a news release.
Now you must assess what happened and review whether the accident has caused or is at risk of causing damage to the environment. There are also other parts of the research facility that NSF hopes to continue to use.
