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The Arecibo radio telescope, the largest in decades, was destroyed. As the Puerto Rican newspaper “El Nuevo Día” writes, the platform of the instrument, weighing almost 900 tons, fell on the antenna. The people in charge of the telescope, the US National Science Foundation, announced on Twitter that the gondola had crashed. There should be no injuries.
In early August, a wire rope broke in the radio telescope. Just two months later, one of the main load-bearing ropes broke and caused further damage. The National Science Foundation considered the repair too dangerous and decided to permanently close the observatory, hence now the accident. They wanted to save various expensive tools in advance.
The observatory was completed in 1963 and was the largest radio telescope in the world for several decades. The Arecibo Observatory has made numerous astronomical discoveries possible over the decades. The observatory was shown to a wider audience in the 1995 James Bond film “Golden Eye”.
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