“Until very recently, it was the biggest radio telescope in the world, and that was always a point of pride for Puerto Rico,” said Emily Alicea-Muñoz, a Puerto Rican radio astronomer to. Scientists effectively said last month that losing the observatory would create a hole in our scientific knowledge and cultural zeitgeist that could not be filled again. In both the scientific community and Puerto Rican society, Arecibo is an immeasurable loss. It scanned the surfaces of Mercury and Venus, and helped astronomers detect and confirm the existence of the first exoplanet in 1992. To give you a sense of what it was able to accomplish, Arecibo’s radio scans of the surface of Titan led to the postulation that it held liquid methane lakes - long before any probe got there to confirm the data up close. While some might argue that the need for this work isn’t exactly self-evident anymore, other countries have been building radio telescopes to rival Arecibo very recently: China completed its Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) for active duty starting in 2020, but it will be incredibly difficult to build one as powerful as the telescope at Arecibo.
National Science Foundation (NSF), which has been vying for more funding for years now, particularly for the kind of radio astronomy that this observatory practiced. You may think that widespread cultural knowledge of a place and the many astronomical “firsts” it achieved would earn it enough momentum to excite investors - sadly, Arecibo had been in a years-long struggle.Īrecibo is a property of the U.S.
In a year where the value of good science is thought by some to be self-evident, and is under more scrutiny than ever before by others, this loss came as a result of a financial plight that many people simply did not know about. This ruled out the possibility of a controlled demolition, and caught a lot of attention online from both the scientific community and those who had enjoyed the facility’s many cameos in pop culture throughout the years. On December 1, the last of the cables holding the 900-ton telescope platform were pulled from their bearings and the entire mechanism collapsed into the massive radio dish below. It had sustained hurricane damage over a number of years, including some from Hurricane Maria that devastated much of the island of Puerto Rico. The Arecibo Observatory, seen in the 1997 extraterrestrial film Contact and the climax of 1995 Bond film Goldeneye, was once part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and had been used by NASA to confirm facts about near-Earth objects (NEOs) since its opening in 1963 up until last month! It was decommissioned due to safety concerns, because two of the cables that held its massive telescope snapped in August and early November. In a period of weeks when we’ve talked a lot about famous filming locations in LA, Manhattan, and the UK, one such iconic location tucked into the vast greenery of Puerto Rico has been unfortunately lost to us. 6, though the Arecibo Observatory made it through that storm relatively unscathed.Įmail Hanneke Weitering at or follow her.
Hurricane Irma also hit the island on Sept. 18) as the observatory was preparing for the second major hurricane to hit Puerto Rico this month. 27), Arecibo representatives said on Twitter Monday (Sept. The visitor center is officially closed through Wednesday (Sept. Getting to the observatory will be a challenge, though, as roads are covered in debris and are inaccessible at this time, USRA officials said.īefore the hurricane, Arecibo officials tweeted that the observatory would reopen to staff today, though it seems unlikely that anyone who didn't take shelter at the observatory will be able to report for work.
Vazquez also detailed some of the damage done to the iconic telescope. National Geographic's Nadia Drake reports that Pennsylvania State University professor Jim Breakall spoke with the telescope operator, who was identified as Ángel Vazquez, and said staff members and their families were safe after sheltering at the facility. One telescope operator at Arecibo managed to contact USRA officials Thursday (Sept.
ARECIBO TELESCOPE DAMAGE BY MARIA UPDATE
While the overall structure of the telescope is still standing, it sustained some pretty serious damage from Hurricane Maria, according to an update from the Universities Space Research Organization (USRA), which helps to operate the Arecibo Observatory. The Arecibo Observatory houses the world's second-largest radio telescope. Without power, phones or internet service, the Arecibo Observatory has been offline since the storm hit. 20) and left widespread destruction in its wake. The storm hit the island as a Category 4 hurricane Wednesday (Sept. Puerto Rico's iconic Arecibo Observatory has sustained some significant damage from Hurricane Maria, officials reported today (Sept.
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