The end of an era came unexpectedly this week when the iconic Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico crashed on December 1, a month after its 57th birthday. And as it happens, the whole thing is captured in stunning drone footage that you can see here right now.
Drone footage of the Aresibo fall. I can’t believe the time I was droning in the air when this happened. What a strange luck. Source: NSF pic.twitter.com/Kpfw47moAC
– tj kuni @ (@tj_kuni) December 3, 2020
The telescope, which became operational in 1963 and was the world’s largest spherical reflector until 2016, has been a critical instrument in astronomical advances for decades. Primarily used for research in atmospheric science and both radio and radar astronomy, it was probably known as the main NASA tool for close monitoring of Earth’s asteroids, and as part of the search for intelligence from the outside world.
In the discovery made using the telescope: the 59-day rotation period of Mercury; The first solid evidence supporting the existence of neutron stars; Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the first binary pulsar; First observation of a comet using radar; And the first known extrasolar planets.
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He was also a target of many pop culture cultures, most notably the James Bond film “Goldenai” (1995), where he was used as the villain’s secret base in the film’s climax. She appeared in “Species” (1996) and “Contact” (1997), and episodes of “The X-Files”, as well as in multiple video games and novels.
Alas, in the 2010s it was ravaged by a series of intense, climate-related tropical storms and hurricanes, which caused devastating damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017. Unfortunately, in the 2001 elections, the government was unwilling to provide funds for repairs. Although new sources of funding were tied together in late 2018, it was decided at the end of November 2020 that there was no way to safely repair the telescope and the National Science Foundation announced that it would be scrapped.
NSF The decision was to proceed after determining the safest possible method by, but physics had other plans. So it is that on December 4, the whole thing fell over and with almost no warning.
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But, despite the tragic end of 60 years of scientific progress, we are glad that such a historically significant event, like that, was captured on video at least. You can see more from the crash here, and see how the telescope was used in “GoldenNe” below.
