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Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory may nonetheless have a future after its huge telescope dramatically collapsed this week, US officers mentioned Thursday.
The construction was destroyed on Tuesday when its 900-ton receiver platform, which was suspended 450 ft (140 metres) within the air, fell free and plunged onto the radio dish under.
Ralph Gaume, director of the US National Science Foundation’s division of astronomical sciences, mentioned “the NSF is just not closing the Arecibo Observatory.”
“The NSF is deeply saddened by the situation,” he advised reporters, including that the company “has a very well-defined process for funding and constructing large-scale infrastructure including telescopes… it’s very early for us to comment on the replacement.”
Engineers had lately warned of the telescope’s decrepit situation, and the NSF introduced solely final month that it will be dismantled.
Two of the cables that held the platform over the radio dish, which measures 1,000 ft (300 metres) in diameter, had snapped this yr, and the construction lastly gave approach on Tuesday morning.
Video footage confirmed the ultimate cables breaking, and the platform swinging down onto the radio dish earlier than a cloud of mud erupts.
The telescope was one of many largest on this planet and has been a device for a lot of astronomical discoveries for the reason that 1960s.
An motion scene from the James Bond movie GoldenEye that includes Pierce Brosnan was filming on the website.
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