[SFDXA] Huge Puerto Rico radio telescope, already damaged, collapses

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  Huge Puerto Rico radio telescope, already damaged, collapses

By Associated Press

December 1, 2020 | 1:29pm | Updated 
<https://nypost.com/2020/12/01/huge-puerto-rico-radio-telescope-already-damaged-collapses/#> 


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This satellite image provided by 2020 Maxar Technologies shows the 
damaged radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, 
Thursday, Nov. 17, 2020.
This satellite image provided by 2020 Maxar Technologies shows the 
damaged radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, 
Thursday, Nov. 17, 2020. AP

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A huge, already damaged radio telescope in 
Puerto Rico that has played a key role in astronomical discoveries for 
more than half a century completely collapsed on Tuesday.

The telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform fell onto the reflector dish 
more than 400 feet below.

The US National Science Foundation had earlier announced that the 
Arecibo Observatory would be closed. An auxiliary cable snapped in 
August, causing a 100-foot gash on the 1,000-foot-wide dish and damaged 
the receiver platform that hung above it. Then a main cable broke in 
early November.

The collapse stunned many scientists who had relied on what was until 
recently the largest radio telescope in the world.

“It sounded like a rumble. I knew exactly what it was,” said Jonathan 
Friedman, who worked for 26 years as a senior research associate at the 
observatory and still lives near it. “I was screaming. Personally, I was 
out of control…. I don’t have words to express it. It’s a very deep, 
terrible feeling.”

Friedman ran up a small hill near his home and confirmed his suspicions: 
A cloud of dust hung in the air where the structure once stood, 
demolishing hopes held by some scientists that the telescope could 
somehow be repaired.

“It’s a huge loss,” said Carmen Pantoja, an astronomer and professor at 
the University of Puerto Rico who used the telescope for her doctorate. 
“It was a chapter of my life.”

Scientists worldwide had been petitioning U.S. officials and others to 
reverse the NSF’s decision to close the observatory. The NSF said at the 
time that it intended to eventually reopen the visitor center and 
restore operations at the observatory’s remaining assets, including its 
two LIDAR facilities used for upper atmospheric and ionospheric 
research, including analyzing cloud cover and precipitation data.

The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defense 
Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. It 
had endured hurricanes, tropical humidity and a recent string of 
earthquakes in its 57 years of operation.

The telescope has been used to track asteroids on a path to Earth, 
conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and determine if a planet is 
potentially habitable. It also served as a training ground for graduate 
students and drew about 90,000 visitors a year.

“I am one of those students who visited it when young and got inspired,” 
said Abel Méndez, a physics and astrobiology professor at the University 
of Puerto Rico at Arecibo who has used the telescope for research. “The 
world without the observatory loses, but Puerto Rico loses even more.”

He last used the telescope on Aug. 6, just days before a socket holding 
the auxiliary cable that snapped failed in what experts believe could be 
a manufacturing error. The National Science Foundation, which owns the 
observatory that is managed by the University of Central Florida, said 
crews who evaluated the structure after the first incident determined 
that the remaining cables could handle the additional weight.

But on Nov. 6, another cable broke.

A spokesman for the observatory said there would be no immediate comment 
and a spokeswoman for the University of Central Florida did not return 
requests for comment.

Scientists had used the telescope to study pulsars to detect 
gravitational waves as well as search for neutral hydrogen, which can 
reveal how certain cosmic structures are formed. About 250 scientists 
worldwide had been using the observatory when it closed in August, 
including Méndez, who was studying stars to detect habitable plantes.

“I’m trying to recover,” he said. “I am still very much affected.”

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<https://nypost.com/tag/space/> , 12/1/20 <https://nypost.com/2020/12/01/>

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