![]() ![]() (The observatory did, however, maintain its record of not losing a single life to an accident-despite maintenance people and others working on it from 500 feet in the air almost daily for decades.) Some have questioned whether more should have been done immediately to stabilize the telescope, but that possibility was foreclosed when the hundreds of tons of instruments crashed into the observatory’s dish on December 1. But when a second one broke on November 6, the agency consulted engineers and decided on a "controlled demolition" of the observatory. The National Science Foundation ordered a new cable. In August 2020, one of the 18 cables that suspended 900 tons of instruments above the huge reflector dish broke. It has probed our planet's upper atmosphere, searched for extraterrestrial intelligence, and enabled us to understand far more about pulsars, the failed black holes that send rhythmic radio signals like lighthouses. ![]() Arecibo's uniquely powerful radar has mapped planets, helped to guide spacecraft to the edges of the solar system, and pinpointed the positions of asteroids that might one day impact Earth. It wildly outperformed its original purposes as well as the broader and deeper possibilities that two upgrades allowed, one in 1972–74 and another in 1994–98. In the 57 years since its construction, the remote observatory has been a primary world center for radio astronomy. Mary Fillmore is a writer who has accompanied her there for more than 30 years. “In particular, lawmakers want to know how NSF will decide whether to build a new observatory, and the estimated cost of such a facility,” the report notes.Joanna Rankin is professor emerita of astronomy and physics at the University of Vermont and a pulsar expert who has used the Arecibo Observatory since 1969. Science reports that the NSF’s share of funds included in the bill comes with a request that the agency outline its plans for the site. That leaves funding to construct an actual replacement - a far more costly proposition than $8 million - a matter of future budgeting priorities from the NSF, which receives its research allocations from Congress.įor the coming year, Congressional funding for the NSF currently hinges on the fate of the $1.4 trillion spending bill that President Donald Trump recently signed - with a number of novel provisos - before returning to Congress for resubmission. ![]() In her order, Vázquez Garced said that the $8 million would be used to fund debris disposal for the remnants of the collapsed telescope, as well as the design of a new radio telescope to replace it. The telescope also became integral to NASA’s search for near-Earth objects. National Science Foundation (NSF), the Arecibo Observatory went into service in 1963, and for nearly 60 years collected radio data used to make a variety of observations that included the world’s first evidence of the existence of exoplanets. That earlier mishap prompted an investigation and, subsequently, plans for a controlled demolition one operator never got the chance to carry out. The observatory had been closed since August due to an initial cable snap. 1 when several support cables snapped, causing the platform to plummet to the dish surface below. Captured in dramatic drone footage, the observatory’s 900-ton platform, suspended 150 meters above the giant 305-meter dish, gave way on Dec. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |