Contemporary danger to the Arecibo telescope could maybe well prefer it offline for months

Per Do apart News, the cable weighed about 30 kilograms (about 66 kilos) per meter, and additional than 200 meters of cable fell onto the dish. “That’s several heaps of topic topic crashing down on the dish,” Johnson acknowledged. 

Arecibo Observatory is smooth assessing the chance, and the Nationwide Science Foundation (NSF) will lead the restore work. As Gizmodo reports, simplest about 250 predominant reflector panels were broken (the dish is fitted with 40,000 panels). But repairs could maybe merely be extra difficult if the platform venerable to get entry to parts of the telescope is unsafe.

While the telescope is out of commission, a tiny analysis, fancy NASA’s carrying out to scrutinize shut to-Earth asteroids, is on retain. Here’s one other setback for Arecibo, the 2nd biggest radio telescope on the earth, which has confronted financial woes and used to be broken for the length of Hurricane Maria. It’s currently being managed by the University of Central Florida.

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