Officials with the National Science Foundation announced that the Arecibo dish at the the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico will be demolished. If the location looks familiar to you, it’s because the dish was featured in the final scenes of GoldenEye—the first James Bond feature film to feature Pierce Brosnan.
“Although it saddens us to make this recommendation, we believe the structure should be demolished in a controlled way as soon as pragmatically possible. It is therefore our recommendation to expeditiously plan for decommissioning of the observatory and execute a controlled demolition of the telescope,” said read a recommendation letter from Thornton Tomasetti—an engineering firm hired to evaluate the situation at Arecibo.
The Arecibo Observatory was constructed from 1960 to 1963 and was the brainchild of Cornell University Physicist William Edwin Gordon. It made significant contributions in the areas of atmospheric sciences, planetary sciences, radio astronomy and radar astronomy. It helped first detect a binary pulsar, the first extrasolar planet discovery, and the many discoveries of nearby asteroids, including potentially dangerous ones.
The decision to demolish the dish was because the main cable that supports the Arecibo Observatory broke on 8 November 2020. It broke and fell onto the reflector dish below, causing additional damage to the dish and other nearby cables.
A formal plan to decommission the big dish is currently in development. However, the plan will likely take weeks to develop, as it will need to meet legal, environmental, safety, and cultural requirements. There is a possibility that the structure could collapse before then.
According to Ashley Zauderer—program director for Arecibo Observatory at NSF—slippage of the auxiliary cable in August should not have happened. There are still many unknowns, she said, and forensic investigations are still underway.
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