December 2nd – On the 1st local time, the National Science Foundation of the United States said that the giant radio telescope platform at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico collapsed between the evening of November 30 and the early morning of December 1.
According to CNN, the National Science Foundation (NSF) tweeted: “The platform of the Arecibo radio telescope collapsed overnight. Fortunately, no casualties were reported. Our top priority is to ensure safety. Engineers have assessed the damage and determined that all three support towers of the telescope have broken, and the 900-ton instrument platform fell to the disc-shaped reflector disk below. The supporting cable of the telescope has also broken.
In fact, there were problems with Arecibo Observatory earlier this year. In August, an auxiliary steel cable of the telescope broke down, causing damage to the telescope’s reflector disk. In November, the main steel cable broke, causing further damage to the telescope reflector disk.
On November 19th local time, the National Science Foundation of the United States announced that the telescope would be shut down and dismantled in a controlled manner. But while the demolition plan was still in progress, the telescope platform collapsed. After the announcement that the Arecibo Observatory would be closed, 35,000 people participated in the online signing campaign and asked to save the observatory.
Arecibo Observatory is one of the most famous observatories in the world. More than 50 years from its completion in 1963 to the completion of China’s 500-meter spherical radio telescope (FAST) in 2016, Arecibo Observatory’s 305-meter radio telescope is the world’s largest single aperture telescope, which is used in three main masters: radio astronomy, atmospheric science and radar astronomy. To study the field.
