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Reuters

The US National Science Foundation on Thursday announced it will close down the massive space telescope at Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, ending 57 years of astronomical discoveries after suffering two destructive mishaps in recent months.
Operations at the observatory, one of the largest in the world, were halted in August when one of its supportive cables slipped loose from its socket, falling and gashing a 30-metre hole in its 305-metre-wide reflector dish.
Another cable then broke earlier this month, tearing a new hole in the dish and damaging nearby cables as engineers scrambled to devise a plan to preserve the crippled structure.
“NSF has concluded that this recent damage to the 305-metre telescope cannot be addressed without risking the lives and safety of work crews and staff,” Sean Jones, assistant director of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate at NSF, said on Thursday.
China bolsters space programme with high-powered vision of new antenna array
“NSF has decided to begin the process of planning for a controlled decommissioning of the 305-meter telescope,” Jones said.
Engineers have not yet determined the cause of the initial cable’s failure, a NSF spokesperson said.
The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defence Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defences. Over decades, it endured hurricanes, endless humidity and a recent string of strong earthquakes.

The observatory’s vast reflector dish and a 900-tonne structure hanging 137 metres above it, nestled in the humid forests of Arecibo, Puerto Rico, has featured in the Jodie Foster film Contact and the James Bond movie GoldenEye.
It had been used by scientists and astronomers around the world for decades to analyse distant planets, find potentially hazardous asteroids and hunt for signatures of extraterrestrial life.
The telescope was instrumental in detecting the near-Earth asteroid Bennu in 1999, which laid the groundwork for Nasa to send a robotic probe there to collect and eventually return its first asteroid dirt sample some two decades later.
Mysterious radio signal from distant galaxy repeats every 16 days
An engineering firm hired by the University of Central Florida, which manages the observatory for NSF under a five-year US$20 million agreement, concluded in a report to the university last week “that if an additional main cable fails, a catastrophic collapse of the entire structure will soon follow.”
Citing safety concerns, the firm ruled out efforts to repair the observatory and recommended a controlled demolition.

The announcement saddened many beyond the scientific world as well, with the hashtag #WhatAreciboMeansToMe popping up on Twitter along with pictures of people working, visiting and even getting married or celebrating a birthday at the telescope.
Alex Wolszczan, a Polish-born astronomer and professor at Pennsylvania State University who helped discover the first extrasolar and pulsar planets, said 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.”
Additional reporting by Associated Press


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Space

Arecibo space telescope where James Bond film GoldenEye and Jodie Foster movie Contact filmed to close down over collapse fears

The National Science Foundation will decommission the radio telescope following two cable breaks in recent months which have brought the structure to near collapse. Photo AFP

FILE - In this Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020 file photo, provided by the Arecibo Observatory, shows the damage done by a broken cable that supported a metal platform, creating a 100-foot (30-meter) gash to the radio telescope's reflector dish in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Giant, aging cables that support the radio telescopes are slowly unraveling in this U.S. territory, threatening scientific projects that researchers say can’t be done elsewhere on the planet. (Arecibo Observatory via AP)

Engineers are concerned other cables could also break at any time, making any attempt at repair excessively dangerous. Photo: Reuters

China bolsters its ambitious space programme with the high-powered vision of a new antenna array

China’s space ambitions have received a boost from the opening of a new deep-space antenna array system in the western province of Xinjiang. Four telescopes form an array capable of recording signals equivalent to a single 66-metre radio telescope, according to Chinese state media. Photo: Xinhua via AP

Mysterious radio signal from distant galaxy repeats every 16 days

An artist's impression of how ground-based telescopes detected a 'fast radio burst' from a distant galaxy. Photo: CSIRO/Andrew Howells

Fast radio bursts from space that repeats every 16 days was detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, a radio telescope designed and built by several groups of Canadian scientists to study space phenomena. Photo: CHIME

News

World

The Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico is one of the largest in the world
Two cables supporting the 900-tonne structure are broken


The renowned Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico will be dismantled after 57 years because of ruptured cables that have led to the threat of collapse.


Technology

James Bond

Arecibo space telescope where James Bond film GoldenEye and Jodie Foster movie Contact filmed to close down over collapse fears

The Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico is one of the largest in the world Two cables supporting the 900-tonne structure are broken

The Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico is one of the largest in the world

Two cables supporting the 900-tonne structure are broken