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The dramatic 2020 collapse of the famous Arecibo Telescope was 39 months in the making , according to a new federal write up .
The just - releasedNational Academy of Sciences , Engineering , and Medicine reportfound an " alarming " deficiency of document vexation about the telescope ’s base hit and stability after it was damage by Hurricane Maria in 2017 . It also found that the bankruptcy of the cables that ultimately snatch up , run to the scope ’s demise , could be decipher to the socket that go for the cables in place .
Damage to the 305-meter telescope at Arecibo Observatory, after its collapse on Dec. 1, 2020.
The Arecibo Observatory is a National Science Foundation facility in Puerto Rico . The observatory ’s key tool , the 1,000 - foot ( 305 - meter ) diameter Arecibo radio receiver scope , was completed in 1963 and was the largest single - aperture scope in the world until 2016 , whenChina ’s FAST scope surpassed it . The search for extraterrestrial intelligence agency was akey part of the scope ’s delegation , and it circularize Earth ’s first endeavour to contact extraterrestrials — now bed as the " Arecibo Message " — in 1974 .
But on Dec.1 , 2020,the scope collapsedwith a sudden snapping of cable . At the time , operatorshad already decommission the telescopeafter early cable failure in August and November damaged decisive parts of the observatory . But the raw report finds that the initial trouble began well before that yr .
Category 4 Hurricane Maria , which made landfall on Puerto Rico on Sept. 20 , 2017 , subjected the scope to the highest wind loads it had ever experienced , the report ’s authors establish . Soon after , review discover that some of the cable’s length holding up the scope had slipped from their socket , but this failed to raise serious concern , the citizens committee tasked with investigate the failure wrote in the report .
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This may have been because the load on the cables were still consider to be within a safe cooking stove , and because the type of socket connections at Arecibo had not been a point of failure in similar cable in the past .
" The Arecibo Telescope open bonny monition stake - Maria that it was in morphological distress through increasing cable socket disengagement , " the study authors write . " Upon contemplation , the unusually large and progressive cable pullouts of primal morphologic cable television service that could be watch during visual inspection several months and years before the [ 2020 failure ] should have raised the highest alarm degree , require urgent natural action . "
However , there was no clear guidance for operators regarding when to raise alarms about morphologic stability , the written report ’s author set up : Each telescope kick upstairs bestow fresh anatomical structure and equipment , but there were not sufficient update to the operating instructions and manual hide how to properly maintain these addition .
The failure may have also stemmed from an unexpected weakness in the zinc connecter that held up the scope cables , the study ’s author warn .
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" There are no old reports of such spelter socket bankruptcy in more than a century of their use , " the citizens committee wrote . The only account the citizens committee could come up with was that perhaps the specialty of the electromagnetic radiation at a telescope the size of Arecibo may have weakened the sockets over many decade . That might have implication for the construction and maintenance of other large radio telescopes , the squad wrote .
The investigation also indicated that it was vestal luck that the scope ’s failure occurred at a time of day when no stave or visitant were in danger .
" The consequences of a morphologic failure of the Arecibo Telescope were not seriously regard in decision - qualification during designing and operation or in extending the telescope ’s life , " the citizens committee concluded . " In particular , there was no formal consideration that the health and safety of the doer and the world were at hazard in the event of a structural unsuccessful person . "
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