Deep in the Puerto Rican jungle, a vast U.S. space telescope will shut down after suffering two catastrophic crashes in recent months, ending 57 years of astronomical research.
The operation was halted at the Arecibo Observatory in Ci Gust when its auxiliary cables were nailed out of its socket and a reflector dish hit a 30-meter (100 ft) hole in its 305 m width (1000 ft).
Another cable broke earlier this month, tearing a new hole in the dish and damaging nearby cables as engineers made a plan to save the extinct structure.
Accidents at the venue – popularly known as the arrangement of the James Bond movie Golden, as well as the contact starring Jodie Foster – were asked to call time at the facility by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), an independent government agency.
Sean Jones, assistant director of the NSF’s Directorate of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, said Thursday that the NSF has concluded that the recent damage to the 305th telescope cannot be remedied without risking the lives and safety of the work crew and staff.
“The NSFA has decided to begin the process of planning for controlled demotion,” Jones said.
NSF A spokesman said engineers could not yet determine the cause of the initial cable failure.
The Serv Observatory’s giant reflector dish and the 816-ton structure hanging 137M above it were used by scientists and astronomers around the world in Puerto Rico to analyze distant planets, find potentially dangerous asteroids and prey. For the signatures of the life of the outside world.
The telescope was instrumental in the discovery of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu in 1999, which laid the groundwork for NASA to send a robotic probe there and finally return its first asteroid dirt sample two decades later.
An engineering firm hired by the University of Central Florida, which operates the observatory for the NSF under a five-year m 20m contract, concluded in a report to the university last week that, “If the additional main cable fails, this The whole catastrophic collapse structure is soon to follow ”.
Citing safety concerns, the firm rejected efforts to improve the observatory and recommended controlled demolition.
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