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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday September 28 2017, @12:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the a-big-blow-to-Arecibo dept.

The Arecibo Observatory is a 309 meter wide radio telescope located in Puerto Rico. Not only can it be used for passive observing of radio frequencies, it has also been used as an active source — to bounce radar signals off planetary bodies — and then use its receiver to perform imaging studies.

Hurricane Maria caused tremendous damage across Puerto Rico — many people are still struggling to find food, water, and power. Though most of the potential damage was mitigated, the observatory did sustain millions of dollars in damages and it is possible that this may lead to its being closed:

As Hurricane Maria hammered the Caribbean last week, a handful of researchers hunkered down in concrete buildings at the Arecibo Observatory with food, well water, and thousands of gallons of diesel fuel for generators. They had done their best to secure the observatory, a 305-meter-wide radio dish nestled in the karst hills of northwestern Puerto Rico. They stowed removable antennas and waveguides, locked movable instrument packages in place, and installed storm shutters on control room windows. Now, they have emerged to find only moderate damage to the observatory, on an island that has been devastated elsewhere. "It's a thing to be thankful for," says Arecibo Deputy Director Joan Schmelz.

But many are worried that the damage, likely on the scale of millions of dollars and apt to keep the observatory closed for weeks or months, will further threaten the existence of Arecibo, which is already on a short list of facilities facing possible closure or downsizing by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Alexandria, Virginia. "I fear that if there is significant damage, that will provide the decision point to decommission the observatory," says space scientist John Mathews of Pennsylvania State University in State College.

The surface of the dish was largely unscathed, and the observatory's most vulnerable component, the instrument platform suspended high above the dish by cables strung from three towers, each more than 80 meters tall, was still in place and seemed undamaged, says Schmelz. She is based at the Columbia, Maryland, headquarters of one of Arecibo's operators, the Universities Space Research Association, and spoke with staff in Puerto Rico who first used a ham radio and then a single working satellite phone. But the roofs on some observatory buildings were blown off, the sinkhole under the dish was flooded, and other equipment was damaged by rain and fallen trees. Most significantly, a large portion of a 29-meter-long antenna—the 430-megahertz line feed used for studying the upper atmosphere—appears to have broken off and fallen from the platform into the dish. Mathews estimates a bill of several million dollars to replace the line feed alone.

There are competing needs for funding. Arecibo has been superseded as the largest radio telescope by China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). Will this be the straw that break's Arecibo's funding back?

Previously:
China Builds World's Largest Radiotelescope
China Can't Find Anyone Smart Enough to Run its Whizzbang $180M 500 Meter Radio Telescope
China Begins Operating World's Largest Radio Telescope


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  • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday September 28 2017, @01:05AM

    by acid andy (1683) on Thursday September 28 2017, @01:05AM (#574130) Homepage Journal

    So basically like a Chinese version of Max Zorin's operation Mainstrike? Except with radio telescopes instead of microchip factories?

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