December 02,2020

Andrew Campbell 

The telescope of Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico reportedly collapsed on December 1. The 900-ton platform of the telescope dropped 137 meters (450 feet) and crushed into the reflector dish below, damaging the reflector dish and surrounding facilities.

Earlier in August, the iconic observatory was damaged by a snapped auxiliary cable slashing out a 100-foot cavity on its reflector dish. A main cable also broke in early November. At that time, officials have already planned that the telescope would be dismantled.

The Arecibo Observatory had been operated by US National Science Foundation (NSF) through the University of Central Florida for more than half a century. The iconic observatory was the second-largest radio telescope in the world until 2016. It was made up of a fixed 1,000-foot-wide dish antenna built into a bowl-like depression that reflects radio waves from space to the suspended instrument platform which was tied down by cables to 3 support towers.

The telescope was built in the early 1960s to study the ionized upper part of Earth's atmosphere, the ionosphere, in the beginning. It has been served as an all-purpose radio observatory for radio astronomers for 57 years. The iconic observatory also made several famous movies including James Bond's "Golden Eye" and "Contact". The NSF stated would carry on an investigation into the platform's collapse.

Photo:Webshot.