Puerto Rico's Arecibo Radio Telescope Damaged By Falling Cable

[woofy]

A broken cable at Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory has torn a gaping 100-foot hole in the dish of one of the largest radio telescopes in the world, taking the instrument offline until repairs can be made.

Arecibo's massive reflector dish, which is built inside a sinkhole in northern Puerto Rico, was damaged when a 3-inch diameter support cable unexpectedly snapped before dawn on Monday, according to the University of Central Florida, which manages the observatory.

In a photo of the damage, twisted panels that make up the 1,000-foot dish can be seen hanging from the structure or lying on the ground beneath it.

When the cable fell, it also damaged several panels on the Gregorian Dome that is suspended above the dish and houses sensitive receivers to collect signals from space.

"We have a team of experts assessing the situation," Francisco Cordova, director of the observatory, said in a statement emailed to NPR. "Our focus is assuring the safety of our staff, protecting the facilities and equipment, and restoring the facility to full operations as soon as possible, so it can continue to assist scientists around the world."

The statement said it is not yet clear what caused the cable to break and it did not give a timetable for repairs.

In an email to NPR, Ramon Lugo III, director of the University of Central Florida's Florida Space Institute, said that "the removal of the damaged cable and the procurement of a cable to replace the damaged cable" were under assessment.

"We are also working on a determination of the cause of this failure, including non-destructive testing of the remaining cables," he said, adding that after a full assessment, "we will develop a recovery plan, schedule and budget."

Since its completion in 1963, Arecibo has played a key role in discoveries ranging from new insights into pulsars to detecting planets outside our solar system. It has figured prominently in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. The observatory was also featured in the film Contact and the James Bond movie GoldenEye.

The observatory held the record for the world's largest radio telescope until 2016 when an even larger instrument of similar design, known as the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, was completed in southern China. After testing, FAST officially went online last year.

In 2017, one of Arecibo's much smaller dishes and a few panels on the main dish were damaged when Category 4 Hurricane Maria raked the island.

 

[woofy]

Huge and famous Arecibo telescope set to be demolished

Radio telescope in Puerto Rico appeared in James Bond film GoldenEye and Jodie Foster's Contact

The National Science Foundation in the U.S. announced Thursday that it will close the huge telescope at the renowned Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in a blow to scientists worldwide who depend on it to search for planets, asteroids and extraterrestrial life.

The independent, federally funded agency said it's too dangerous to keep operating the single dish radio telescope — one of the world's largest — given the significant damage it recently sustained. An auxiliary cable broke in August and tore a 30-metre hole in the reflector dish and damaged the dome above it.

Then on Nov. 6, one of the telescope's main steel cables snapped, causing further damage and leading officials to warn that the entire structure could collapse.

NSF officials noted that even if crews were to repair all the damage, engineers found that the structure would still be unstable in the long term.

"This decision is not an easy one for NSF to make, but the safety of people is our number one priority," said Sean Jones, the agency's assistant director for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate.

"We understand how much Arecibo means to this community and to Puerto Rico."

He said the goal was to preserve the telescope without placing people at risk, but "we have found no path forward to allow us to do so safely."

The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the U.S. Defence Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defences. In its 57 years of operation, it endured hurricanes, endless humidity and a recent string of strong earthquakes.

Hollywood cameos

The telescope boasts a 305-metre-wide dish featured in the Jodie Foster film Contact and the James Bond movie GoldenEye. Scientists worldwide have used the dish along with the 800-tonne platform hanging 137 metres above it to track asteroids on a path to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and determine if a planet is potentially habitable.

Alex Wolszczan, a Polish-born astronomer and professor at Pennsylvania State University who helped discover the first extrasolar and pulsar planets, told The Associated Press that while the news wasn't surprising, it was disappointing. He worked at the telescope in the 1980s and early 1990s

"I was hoping against hope that they would come up with some kind of solution to keep it open," he said. "For a person who has had a lot of his scientific life associated with that telescope, this is a rather interesting and sadly emotional moment."

Ralph Gaume, director of NSF's Division of Astronomical Sciences, stressed that the decision has nothing to do with the observatory's capabilities, which have allowed scientists to study pulsars to detect gravitational waves as well as search for neutral hydrogen, which can reveal how certain cosmic structures are formed.

"The telescope is currently at serious risk of unexpected, uncontrolled collapse," he said. "Even attempts at stabilization or testing the cables could result in accelerating the catastrophic failure."

Officials suspect a potential manufacturing error is to blame for the auxiliary cable that snapped but say they are surprised that a main cable broke about three months later given that it was supporting only about 60 per cent of its capacity.

Engineers had assessed the situation after the first cable broke, noting that about 12 of the roughly 160 wires of the second cable that eventually broke had already snapped, said Ashley Zauderer, program officer for Arecibo Observatory at NSF.

"It was identified as an issue that needed to be addressed, but it wasn't seen as an immediate threat," she said.

Loss for science, tourism

The news saddened many of the more than 250 scientists that have used a telescope that is also considered one of Puerto Rico's main tourist attractions, drawing some 90,000 visitors a year. It also has long served as a training ground for hundreds of graduate students.

The NSF said it intends to restore operations at the observatory's remaining assets, including its two LIDAR facilities, one of which is located in the nearby island of Culebra. Those are used for upper atmospheric and ionospheric research, including analyzing cloud cover and precipitation data. Officials also aim to resume operations at the visitor centre.

Wolszczan, the astronomer, said the value of the telescope won't instantly disappear for him and many other scientists because they are still working on projects based on observations and data taken from the observatory.

"The process of saying goodbye to Arecibo will certainly take some years," he said. "It won't be instantaneous."