“NSF is saddened by this development,” the independent federal agency wrote on Twitter. The NSF, which helped manage the telescope, said in November that efforts to repair the structure would be too dangerous and therefore it would have to be demolished. Two cables supporting the reflector dish had broken since August, leaving a gash in the dish and making the site unsafe, forcing officials to close the observatory. The Arecibo Observatory space telescope, seen in a satellite image taken over Arecibo, Puerto Rico It was also featured in two US films, GoldenEye starring Pierce Brosnan as James Bond and released in 1995, and Contact, with actors Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey two years later. The telescope, one of the largest in the world, had been used by scientists around the globe for decades to study distant planets, find potentially hazardous asteroids and hunt for potential signatures of extraterrestrial life. National Science Foundation December 1, 2020 NSF will release more details when they are confirmed. NSF is working with stakeholders to assess the situation. The instrument platform of the 305m telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico fell overnight. The radio telescope’s 900-tonne instrument platform, suspended by cables 137m (450 feet) above a 305-metre-wide (1,000-foot) bowl-shaped reflector dish, fell on Tuesday morning, the United States’ National Science Foundation (NSF) said. "I am still very much affected.The massive telescope on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico – located at the Arecibo Observatory and deteriorating since August – collapsed on Tuesday, officials said, after 57 years of astronomical discoveries. About 250 scientists worldwide had been using the observatory when it closed in August, including Méndez, who was studying stars to detect habitable planets. 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. 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. 6, just days before a socket holding the auxiliary cable that snapped failed in what experts believe could be a manufacturing error. "The world without the observatory loses, but Puerto Rico loses even more." "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. It also served as a training ground for graduate students and drew about 90,000 visitors a year. 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 had endured hurricanes, tropical humidity and a recent string of earthquakes in its 57 years of operation. The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defense Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. Get breaking news alerts in the FOX5NY News app. "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. Meanwhile, installing a new telescope would cost up to $350 million, money the NSF doesn't have, Vázquez said, adding it would have to come from U.S. However, observatory director Francisco Córdova, said that while the NSF decided it was too risky to repair the damaged cables before Tuesday's collapse, he believes there had been options, such as relieving tension in certain cables or using helicopters to help redistribute weight. "(The National Science Foundation) did the best that they could with what they have." "The maintenance was kept up as best as we could," he said. He said that it was extremely difficult to say whether anything could have been done to prevent the damage that occurred after the first cable snapped in August. It was too much for the old girl to take." (University of Central Florida photo via National Science Foundation) A 100-foot gash seen in the dish at the Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Nov.
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