Massive Arecibo radio telescope featured in James Bond movie collapses
- Two of the cables that held the platform over the radio dish had snapped this year
- On Tuesday, a 900-tonne receiver platform plunged almost 140 metres onto dish below
A massive radio telescope at Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory – one of the world’s largest – collapsed on Tuesday after sustaining severe damage since August, officials said, following 57 years of astronomical discoveries.
The deteriorating telescope’s 900-tonne instrument platform, suspended by cables 137 metres above a 305-metre-wide bowl-shaped reflector dish, fell on Tuesday morning, the US National Science Foundation said. No injuries were reported, it added.
The telescope – which received radio waves from space – had been used by scientists around the world to hunt for possible signatures of extraterrestrial life, study distant planets and find potentially hazardous asteroids. It also gained fame after pivotal scenes in the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye starring Pierce Brosnan were shot there.
Two cables supporting the reflector dish had broken since August, causing damage and forcing officials to close the observatory as engineering firms retained by the University of Central Florida, which manages the observatory, studied ways to repair the damage.
In November, the engineering reviews led the NSF and the university to conclude that efforts to repair the structure would be too dangerous and that it would have to be demolished.
The NSF said that initial findings indicated that the top section of all three of the telescope’s support towers broke off and that as the instrument platform fell, the telescope’s support cables also plummeted.