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For the second time in just a few months, a cable accident has occurred at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, causing even more damage to one of the world’s largest and most powerful radio telescopes.
In August, astronomers and science enthusiasts were dismayed to see a giant hole torn through the facility’s massive reflector plate, resulting from a broken auxiliary cable that fell and crashed into the structure, leaving an ugly notch 30 meters long.
Over the next few months, engineers and observatory workers prepared for a complex repair job, with work scheduled to begin this week. Unfortunately, a second cable outage on Friday evening local time has now further complicated the situation.
“This is certainly not what we wanted to see, but the important thing is that no one gets hurt,” explains Observatory Director Francisco Cordova.
“We were thoughtful in our assessment and prioritized safety in planning the repairs that were to start on Tuesday. Now this is it.
The Arecibo Observatory in 2019, before this year’s accidents. (UCF)
According to the University of Central Florida (UCF), which manages the Arecibo Observatory on behalf of the National Science Foundation, the second cable incident appears to be related to the first.
Both cables were connected to the same support tower, and it is possible that the second break was triggered by additional stress after the first failure.
Observers at the facility had been monitoring all cables since the August crash and had noticed wires snapping on the cable that had broken last week, likely due to fraying of the extra load. Unfortunately, before any protective stops could be put in place, the second cable also gave way, falling onto the dish, causing further damage to it and damaging nearby cables as well.
In collaboration with engineers called upon to assess the situation, UCF is speeding up the repair plan in progress, with a view to reducing the tension on the remaining cables as quickly as possible. Two new cables are already on their way to the observatory, and the team will continue to assess the structure while awaiting the arrival of parts.
“There is a lot of uncertainty until we can stabilize the structure,” Cordova says. “He has our full attention. We are assessing the situation with our experts and hope to have more to share soon.”
What makes the whole repair and fortification project even more difficult is the age of Arecibo: the historic facility was built in the 1960s and has held the title of the largest single-aperture radio telescope world for more than half a century – until it was replaced by an even more gigantic five-hundred-meter-aperture spherical telescope (FAST), which began its testing phase in 2016 and reached its full potential operational status in January.
During its long-standing service, the Arecibo facility has passed dozens of astronomical milestones, observing and recording new scientific measurements of distant exoplanets, asteroids, pulsars, radio emissions and molecules in distant galaxies.
The observatory was also at the forefront of extraterrestrial intelligence research (SETI) and was the transmitter of the Arecibo message, a pioneering attempt in 1974 to broadcast an interstellar radio signal.
It may have been eclipsed by FAST in terms of size, but the Arecibo Observatory should nonetheless have decades of discoveries, but only if its serious and apparently growing structural problems can be addressed.
“It’s not good, but we remain committed to bringing the facility back online,” Cordova says. “It is too important a tool for the advancement of science.”
This is certainly true, but for an aging facility that has been in operation since before humanity visited the Moon, it is difficult to know for sure just how severe the damage is and how ultimately fortifiable or repairable the structure will be. , and even less if other accidents occur. the short term.
We hope for a positive result and that emergency measures can stabilize this pillar of 20th century astronomy. But even before these recent cable breaks, the observatory was still receiving repairs for damage from Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico in 2017.
“It’s not a pretty picture,” said University of Vermont radio astronomer Joanna Rankin. Science. “It’s pretty damn serious.”
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