Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico suffers serious damage after cable breaks

The enduring Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has long past darkish, on the very least for a transient while.

Undoubtedly one of many telescope’s supporting cables snapped early Monday morning (Aug. 10), ripping a 100-foot-lengthy (30 meters) cut within the broad radio dish, fixed with the College of Central Florida (UCF). The observatory has been shut down while engineers assess the damage and formulate a fix.

“We have now a personnel of specialists assessing the topic,” Arecibo director Francisco Cordova acknowledged in a UCF Currently assertion. “Our focal level is assuring the security of our personnel, defending the facilities and tool and restoring the skill to elephantine operations as soon as that you’re going to be in a position to judge, so it can continue to attend scientists at some stage within the arena.”

Related: The Arecibo Observatory: A broad radio telescope in pictures

The 1,000-foot-extensive (300 m) Arecibo received up and operating in 1963. It changed into the arena’s greatest single-dish radio telescope till 2016, when China’s 5-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope claimed the mantle.

Arecibo has done a gigantic different of labor all the very best blueprint thru its lengthy existence, from monitoring and imaging conclude to-Earth asteroids to listening for that you’re going to be in a position to judge indicators from developed alien civilizations. And its verbal substitute attempts have not all been one-system: In 1974, scientists historical the observatory to beam the pictorial “Arecibo Message” in direction of M13, a globular cluster that lies 25,000 gentle-years from Earth.

The observatory’s reputation extends beyond the sizable group. The climactic scenes of the 1995 James Bond movie “Goldeneye” have been filmed there, and Arecibo performed a prominent feature within the 1997 science fiction film “Contact,” fixed with the e book by Carl Sagan.

Related: The 10 most bright telescopes on Earth

Even supposing the photographer in me prefers the perspective of the photo already making the rounds on Twitter, right here’s a much-less-catastrophic-attempting telephoto shot, courtesy of Phil Perillat, of the damage sustained by @NAICobservatory due to the cable failure Monday. pic.twitter.com/bClRxkQk8kAugust 12, 2020

We don’t have any phrases.https://t.co/nKzFZtV3DE pic.twitter.com/FIo5NbYPGfAugust 11, 2020

Arecibo has bounced assist from damage prior to. Shall we embrace, Hurricane Maria knocked the observatory offline when it slammed into Puerto Rico with devastating force in September 2017. But Arecibo’s lights came assist on unbiased a pair of months later, in December. 

Arecibo is a U.S. Nationwide Science Foundation facility. The observatory is managed by UCF, in collaboration with the Universidad Ana G. Méndez and Yang Enterprises Inc.

Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Huge Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a e book in regards to the look for alien existence. Practice him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Practice us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.