The Arecibo Observatory telescope will be closed after being damaged by the fall of the support cables

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) says it will close the huge space telescope of Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, ending 57 years of astronomical discoveries after suffering two destructive misadventures in recent months.

Operations at the observatory, one of the largest in the world, were halted in August when one of its support cables loosened from its grip, falling and tearing a 30-meter hole in the telescope’s 305 m-wide reflector.

Another cable then broke this month, ripping a new hole in the dish and damaging nearby cables as engineers scrambled to devise a plan to preserve the paralyzed structure.

“NSF concluded that this recent damage to the 305-meter telescope cannot be addressed without endangering the life and safety of the work crews and personnel,” said Sean Jones, Deputy Director of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the NSF.

Engineers have not yet determined the cause of the initial cable failure, an NSF spokesperson said.

The observatory’s vast reflector and a 900-ton structure suspended more than 100 meters above it, nestled in the humid forests of Arecibo, the Caribbean nation, had been used by scientists and astronomers around the world for decades to analyze planets. far away, find potentially dangerous asteroids and hunt for signatures of extraterrestrial life.

The telescope was instrumental in detecting the near-Earth asteroid Bennu in 1999, which laid the groundwork for NASA to send a robotic probe there to collect and eventually return its first sample of asteroid dirt some two decades later.

An engineering firm hired by the University of Central Florida, which operates the observatory for NSF under a $ 20 million ($ 20 million) five-year agreement, concluded in a report to the university last week “that if an additional main cable fails, a catastrophic collapse of the entire structure will soon follow. “

Citing safety concerns, the company ruled out efforts to repair the observatory and recommended a controlled demolition.

Reuters