A broken cable destroyed part of the Arecibo observatory

The Arecibo Observatory is an emblematic institution. Located in Puerto Rico, this National Science Foundation (NSF) observatory was the largest radio telescope in the world between 1963 and 2016. Although that honor now goes to the Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China, Arecibo will be forever recognized for his contributions to everything from radio astronomy to extraterrestrial intelligence research (SETI).

Unfortunately, the Arecibo observatory suffered serious damage when, on Monday August 10, an auxiliary cable that supports the platform suspended above the telescope’s reflector antenna broke. The cable struck the Gregorian dome (which sits below the platform) before landing on the reflector dish, creating a gash over 30 meters (100 feet) in length and forcing the observatory to shut down. temporarily its operations.

While it is not known why the cable broke, information on when and the resulting damage have been released. According to a statement from the National Center for Astronomy and Ionosphere (NAIC), the incident occurred at 2:45 a.m. local time (11:45 p.m. PDT) when a 7.62 cm (3 inch) cable broke and fell. The cable struck 6-8 panels in the Gregorian dome and twisted the access platform before landing on the reflective dish.

This dome is where the Arecibo L-Band Feed Array (ALFA) multibeam receiver is located, a seven-source system that enables large-scale radio readings of the sky. In response to the incident, operations at the observatory ceased, and the science and visitor center was closed until a team of engineers could assess the cause of the broken cable and make repairs.

Francisco Cordova, the director of the observatory, said in a recent NAIC press release:

“We have a team of experts assessing the situation. Our goal is to ensure the safety of our staff, to protect facilities and equipment, and to get the facility back up to speed as soon as possible, so that it can continue to help scientists around the world.

Not only is Puerto Rico located in the “hurricane belt”, it also sits at the top of a tectonically active region. As a result, the Arecibo Observatory has suffered numerous hurricanes, tropical storms and earthquakes during its more than fifty year history. Hurricane Maria, which caused significant damage to the island in 2017, also damaged the observatory – whose repairs are still incomplete.

Nonetheless, the facility remained operational throughout and continued to contribute to significant breakthroughs in astronomy and cosmology. This includes confirming the existence of neutron stars, the discovery of the first binary pulsar, the first millisecond pulsar, the first exoplanets, and the characterization of asteroids and planets in the solar system.

In addition, the facility has also played an important role in Alien Intelligence Research (SETI) and even in Messaging Alien Intelligence (METI) – aka. “SETI active”. In addition to providing the source data for [email protected] As part of the SETI Institute’s Pheonix project, Arecibo is also one of the few facilities in the world to actively send a coded message into space intended for extraterrestrials.

This was known as the Arecibo Message, a 1679-bit binary pattern image that was broadcast in 1974 towards the globular cluster M13 (located 21,000 light years away). It included numbers, chemical formulas and a visual representation of the human form and where the message was being sent from. The message was designed by famous scientists Frank Drake and Carl Sagan and remains the strongest signal ever sent to space.

The University of Central Florida (UCF) operates the observatory under a cooperative agreement with the Universidad Ana G. Méndez (UAGM) and Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI). Currently, Arecibo is also home to the research group that manages the Planetary Radar Project, an initiative that tracks and characterizes near-Earth objects (NEO). This project is supported by the NASA Near-Earth Object Observation Program, which is part of the NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

If there is one thing people can agree on in these times of division, it is that the Arecibo Observatory deserves a quick recovery. It’s an old observatory, but still a first, and it still has many years of life left!

Further reading: NAIC