Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico Collapses After Gashes Were Made on Reflector

The Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico that was damaged previously is already collapsed. It ends fifty years of discovery after it fell on the forest floor last Tuesday.

Parts that fell as the receiving platform and its Gregorian dome with the height of four-stories high, with the secondary reflectors dropped into the north part of the parabolic reflector dish about 400 feet or more.

Before the collapse of the mammoth structure, the U.S. National Science Foundation said it would shutter the radio telescope after fifty years of discovery. One of the supporting cables had snapped last August, which struck a 100-foot gash on the telescopic dish. Other damaged parts were the receiver platform over it. Later the main cable did break in November, condemning the structure, reported AP News.

It is pivotal in all the discoveries made about the cosmos and one of the largest radio telescopes until China's one was complete. Scientists could not believe that the apparatus is finally closed down.

Jonathan Friedman worked as a senior research associate at the observatory, where he lives nearby. He was there when the rumble happened, and the dish fell. The loss of the telescope was deeply personal, and its failure was significant. In his own words, he could not reconcile how it deeply personal.

He added that he raced up a small hill and was shocked. Where once the Arecibo Radio Telescope and its supports stood, was dust and rubble. Its destruction was final, and the wish to repair the aged device is not possible anymore.

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At 7:56 a.m. Tuesday, the whole structure gave way, which was caused by the weakened support and snapped wire cannot hold the immense weight. One comment by the telescope's director of operations, ángel Vázquez, told A.P. that the collapse is only a matter of time.

Adding that with the weakened of the massive support structure that cannot stop its fall. It weighs a lot and eventually has done it in.

The snapping of the first cable in August was just the start of the collapse. He said it is difficult to say whether the massive telescope can even be saved; no one knew.

He added the maintenance was done to keep it running. The National Science Foundation tried its best to keep the project running.

Sources say that observatory director Francisco Córdova said that NSF was not risking personnel safety and even attempts to repair it. But the structure collapsed before other options could be tried. One suggestion tension adjustment in the cables, helicopter to transfer the weight of the massive dish.

Some floated that a new telescope is made at the cost of $350 million, more than the NSFs budget. The U.S. Congress would need to be authorized by U.S. Congress to make it happen.

One astronomer and professor from the University of Puerto Rico, Carmen Pantoja, said she used it for her doctorate. Remarking, it was a chapter in her life.

All over the world is a request for U.S. officials not to shut down the telescope observatory. Some parts like the LIDAR were kept running by the NSF, but the destruction of the Arecibo Radio Telescope has decided its fate.