Officials at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico do not yet know what caused a cable failure that seriously damaged this iconic radio telescope of the facility this week, forcing it to shut down temporarily.
On Monday (August 10), an auxiliary table supporting a platform suspended above the 1000-meter-wide (300-meter) radio dish broke and crashed into the reflector panels of the telescope, making a hole in the dish of about 100 feet (30 m) long.
In a news conference with reporters Friday (August 14), Arecibo director Francisco Cordova said 250 of the observatory’s primary dish panels had been damaged, along with several supporting cables under the dish. But observers have not yet fully assessed the extent of the damage or the cost of the repairs needed to get the 56-year-old radio telescope – once the largest single radio dish on Earth – into action.
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Cordova said the auxiliary cable is designed to last at least 15 to 20 years, so it is not clear why the cable failed. It was one of several auxiliary cables added to the observatory in the 1990s to help support a new addition to the telescope, called the Gregorian Dome, which contained an antenna receiver on the platform.
In a statement issued Monday, UCF officials said about six to eight panels on the Gregorian dome were damaged by the broken cable, and that the platform used to access the dome was light. twisted. But it is not yet clear if the instruments in the dome were affected, Cordova said, adding that officials were still checking the damage.
Before observatories begin replacing the panels on the radio dish, their first priority will be to ensure the structural stability of the platform and keep personnel safe, Cordova said.
No one was injured when the crash happened around 2:45 a.m. EDT (0645 GMT) on Monday because the facility was currently closed. But if the cable had been cut during the day, with staff working on the site, Arecibo employees could have been injured, Ramon Lugo, director of the Florida Space Institute at the University of Central Florida (UCF), told Science Magazine . UCF manages the observatory for the National Science Foundation.
The Arecibo Observatory is closed indefinitely until the telescope can be repaired. While the observatory is best known for its work in the search for life and potentially dangerous asteroids on Earth, astronomers use it for a variety of space research and observations. Some of the work that has been fixed up to the telescope includes studies of gravitational waves and pulsars, Cordova said.
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While the extent of the damage is not yet clear, Cordova said he is confident Arecibo will bounce back – as it has done several times before. In January of this year, a major earthquake shuts down Arecibo, and it survives major damage from Hurricane Maria in 2018.
“The observatory has had a lot of opportunities over the years, and this is just another hug along the way,” Cordova said. “We’m a pretty skilled bond.”
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