A Great Eye on the Cosmos Has Gone Out

Tuckerfan · Nov 20, 2020

The Arecibo telescope is dead.

Arecibo radio telescope, an icon of astronomy, is lost

The National Science Foundation (NSF) will decommission Arecibo Observatory's massive radio dish after damage has made the facility too dangerous to repair, the agency announced today (Nov. 19).

The announcement came as scientists awaited a verdict about the fate of the iconic observatory after damage to the complex cabling supporting a 900-ton science platform suspended over the dish. In August, a cable slipped out of its socket, but engineers evaluating the situation deemed it stable; earlier this month, a second cable unexpectedly snapped, leaving Arecibo's fate much more perilous. After considering three separate engineering reports, the NSF, which owns the property, has decided the facility is unstable enough that there is no way to repair the damage that does not put personnel at undue risk.

"Our goal has been to find a way to preserve the telescope without placing anyone's safety at risk," Sean Jones, assistant director for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate at the NSF, said in a news conference today. "However, after receiving and reviewing the engineering assessments, we have found no path forward that would allow us to do so safely. And we know that a delay in decision making leaves the entire facility at risk of an uncontrolled collapse, unnecessarily jeopardizing people and also the additional facilities."

"The telescope is currently at serious risk of an unexpected, uncontrolled collapse," Ralph Gaume, director of NSF's Division of Astronomical Sciences, said. "According to engineering assessments, even attempts of stabilization or testing the cables could result in accelerating the catastrophic failure. Engineers cannot tell us the safety margin of the structure, but they have advised NSF that the structure will collapse in the near future on its own."

Although NSF is the agency most closely tied to the facility, NASA currently provides about one-third of the observatory's operating costs to fund planetary radar observations, particularly of near-Earth asteroids. "While NASA was not directly involved in the investigation of what led to the observatory’s damage in August, the NSF communicated with stakeholders, including NASA, as their investigation proceeded," NASA representatives wrote in a statement. "NASA respects the National Science Foundation’s decision to put the safety of those who work, visit, and study at the historic observatory above all else."

Safety concerns loom
During the news conference, officials emphasized that the decision was based on prioritizing safety, not a reflection of the scientific work that Arecibo has done over the past decades or could continue to do in the future, and that some hoped-for science will be lost with the facility.

"This decision has nothing to do with the scientific merits of Arecibo Observatory," Gaume said. "That is not a consideration. It's all about safety."

Guame added that the agency will work with scientists who had been planning to use the Arecibo telescope and its other facilities in order to relocate those planned research projects wherever possible. However, the facility was unique, particularly in its radar capability, which was heavily used to study near-Earth asteroids and other solar system objects.

"Some of the Arecibo science will transfer; some of it will not," Gaume said.

The officials also emphasized that if they can manage to decommission the telescope in a controlled manner, the other assets at Arecibo Observatory — primarily, the visitor center, an atmospheric science instrument on site and a second atmospheric tool on the neighboring island of Culebra — should survive.

Collapse threat a challenge for decommissioning
Both of the failed cables on Arecibo were connected to the same support tower. An engineering analysis completed after the second cable failed in November found that if one more cable on that tower, dubbed Tower 4, failed, the platform would collapse into the dish and likely cause the towers to topple. And because the cable support system is already so fragile, the engineers didn't see any way to safely evaluate the situation in more detail, much less stabilize it.

"What we're challenged with is a structure for which we don't understand the safety margins, the engineering approaches to better understand the safety margins involve considerable risk, and the engineering approach to repair the structure appears to be highly unsafe."

That means the situation is volatile enough that the NSF can't guarantee the telescope will be decommissioned in a controlled manner. Gaume and Ashley Zauderer, the program director for Arecibo Observatory at the NSF, said that the agency has hired engineers to develop a plan for a controlled decommissioning. Creating that plan and gathering the necessary approvals for it will take multiple weeks, they added.

The officials also declined to provide an idea of what that strategy would look like, although they mentioned the potential for helicopters or explosives to be considered.

In conjunction with the news conference, the NSF provided an engineering report from the firm leading the analysis of Arecibo Telescope after the second failure, which offers little more detail about the facility's fate.

"We believe the structure will collapse in the near future if left untouched," John Abruzzo, managing principal of Thornton Tomasetti, wrote. "Controlled demolition, designed with a specific collapse sequence determined and implemented with the use of explosives, will reduce the uncertainty and danger associated with collapse."

The severity of the situation stems from both the fact that two cables have already failed, and the way three separate engineering consultants were caught off-guard by the second failure. "The three expert companies that we brought in didn't provide any input or any inkling that there was an issue," Gaume said of the main cables after the August failure.

"It is, I think, just truly unfortunate that this main cable failed before we had a chance to get things stabilized," Zauderer said.

The NSF officials said that right now, their priority is focused on safely decommissioning the radio dish and protecting as much of the other facilities on-site as possible. But they did emphasize that they are not decommissioning Arecibo Observatory as a whole, that they recognize the facility's importance in Puerto Rico, and that in the long term, they want to ensure the future of the site and the science that it has fostered for decades.

"We're discussing the decommissioning of a structure made of steel and cables, but it truly is the people on that have the ideas," Zauderer said. "It's the idea of discovery that led to the construction to start with, it's the passion of the people that work at the observatory … to continue to explore, to learn, that is the true heart and soul of Arecibo."

"It's not the telescope that's the heart and soul, it's the people."
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One hopes that Congress will provide funding for it to be replaced, but I'm dubious.

Paladin · Nov 20, 2020

NAHTMMM · Nov 22, 2020

Completed in 1963. Over 50 years of service.

Bickendan · Nov 22, 2020

Fisherman's Worf · Dec 1, 2020

It apparently collapsed earlier today:

Someone was actually able to get some footage:

Will Power · Dec 2, 2020

What a shame

SO MUCH was accomplished with that telescope.

Lanzman · Dec 2, 2020

I hope to heck they rebuild the thing. Too valuable an instrument to be without.

Bailey · Dec 2, 2020

Glad that there were signs that let them know the failure was imminent a couple of weeks ago, otherwise people would have been killed when this happened.

We Are Borg · Dec 2, 2020

Sad. I always wanted to visit Arecibo.

Been to the VLA in New Mexico twice. It's quite a sight.

Tuckerfan · Dec 2, 2020

Pics of the dish in the wake of the collapse.

steve2^4 · Dec 3, 2020

Today there are better tools. China has a similar scope that just came online. Space telescopes are the way to go. Even a space radio telescope would be better than rebuilding this. You could have a planet sized "dish."

Arecibo was built at the height of the cold-war not to visit distant stars (that was a side benefit) but as a way to transmit high-power radar to look at soviet ICBMs in flight. That purpose was made redundant by other space based satellites so it lost its funding.

Still they were doing good science there.

Lanzman · Dec 3, 2020

The ideal location for an Arecibo-sized telescope would be the dark side of the moon, shielded from all Earth radio emissions. Hate to think what that would cost, tho . . .

steve2^4 · Dec 3, 2020

Elon, you're needed...

Clippy · Dec 3, 2020

I found a video of the collapse. RIP, Arecibo. Yikes. Uhh, no direct link but you can see it here. https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/arecibo/

Bailey · Dec 3, 2020

Tuckerfan · Dec 3, 2020

steve2^4 said: ↑

Today there are better tools. China has a similar scope that just came online. Space telescopes are the way to go. Even a space radio telescope would be better than rebuilding this. You could have a planet sized "dish."
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Yes, and no. For the cost of an orbiting radio telescope, you could probably have a dozen earthbound ones. All of which could be daisy-chained together to act as a single giant dish (we currently do this periodically). Granted, a space-based telescope could pick up things that an earthly one couldn't, but you could still get huge volumes of data.

The big problem with an orbiting telescope is one that we're having right now, that few people outside of the various space programs know about: Not enough antennas on the ground to handle all the data we could beam back. Already, the various probes we have out there are having to dump data because there's no available stations on the ground to receive the transmission and the probe doesn't have enough storage to keep the data until one becomes available and still collect data. I believe that Arecibo was one of the places probe data was sent to. Without the telescope, even more data gets lost.

So, even if we build orbiting telescopes, we're going to have to build more ground-based ones as well, since they can do double duty as downlink stations.

Tuckerfan · Dec 4, 2020

Bickendan · Dec 6, 2020

Tuckerfan · Dec 6, 2020

Tuckerfan · Dec 6, 2020

Space Force might want to rebuild the telescope, according to info buried in this piece.

NASA weighing options for future planetary radar capabilities after Arecibo

With the Arecibo radio telescope to be decommissioned, NASA is beginning to consider options for future planetary radar capabilities, including potential cooperation with the U.S. Space Force.

NASA has used the 305-meter-diameter radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico for years as a radar, particularly for studies of near Earth asteroids. While the radar isn’t used to discover asteroids, it can refine their orbits and help characterize them.

However, the National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns the observatory, announced Nov. 19 it will decommission the telescope after engineering analyses showed the telescope was at risk of collapse. Two cables that help support an instrument platform suspended over the dish snapped, one in August and the other Nov. 6, and engineering studies concluded the risk of an uncontrolled collapse is too great to allow crews to repair the damage. NSF announced early Dec. 1 that the instrument platform collapsed overnight, with no injuries reported.

“This is a hard thing to have to take,” Lindley Johnson, director of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, said at a Nov. 30 meeting of the agency’s Planetary Science Advisory Committee. His office funds the planetary radar work at Arecibo.

The closure of Arecibo, he said, will have “a slight negative impact” on NASA’s planetary defense work. NASA has another radar system at the Goldstone Observatory in California that can also be used for observing near Earth asteroids and other objects. The Goldstone radar is back in operation after recently installing a new klystron.

The Goldstone radar has some advantages over Arecibo, including being able to see more of the sky and finer resolution. However, Arecibo’s more powerful radar has a greater range, allowing it to observe more distant objects.

Another disadvantage for Goldstone is that it is located near restricted military airspace, which requires coordination for radar observations that can make it difficult to use for time-sensitive studies. Johnson said that process has improved somewhat.

Johnson argued that the closure of Arecibo presents an opportunity to examine the future of planetary radar systems. “It’s really time to be looking at the next generation of planetary radar capabilities,” he said. That’s likely to use arrays of smaller dishes rather than one monolithic dish, like Arecibo.

Old facilities, he added, are “high maintenance” and difficult to keep operate. “Technology has moved on from 30 years ago,” when Arecibo first got planetary radar capabilities, he said. “We need to take advantage of the new technologies.”

Any future planetary radar system would likely be done in partnership with other organizations. With few exceptions, notably the Infrared Telescope Facility observatory in Hawaii, NASA does not operate ground-based telescopes, focusing instead on space-based observatories.

The NSF has not discussed what plans, if any, it has for a successor to Arecibo, but Johnson suggested one possibility for NASA might be cooperation with the military. “We do definitely have an opportunity and an interest in partnering with the U.S. Space Force on a more capable radar system,” he said.

The Space Force’s interest in such a radar, he said, would be to track objects in cislunar space, something that would require a radar more powerful than existing ones that are limited largely to tracking objects in low Earth orbit. The Pentagon has shown growing interest in monitoring objects in the region between the Earth and the moon, including an experimental spacecraft mission called the Cislunar Highway Patrol System, or CHIPS, under development by the Air Force Research Laboratory.

“Those are the kinds of things that are being talked about,” Johnson said. “What agencies can NASA partner with for a future planetary radar capability?”

Some members of the advisory committee, though, weren’t ready to give up on Arecibo, asking NASA officials if all the options for repairing the radio telescope there had been exhausted. “I think it would be good to have some additional study before final decisions are made, but the NSF will have the lead on it,” Johnson said.

“Arecibo is an NSF facility, and the responsibilities for ground-based observatories lie with NSF. It’s not in NASA’s purview,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division.

She emphasized the NSF made the decision to decommission the Arecibo radio telescope based on safety. “This is NSF’s decision to make,” she said, “and we’re supporting them in their decision to put safety first.”
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Fisherman's Worf · Dec 15, 2020

Tuckerfan said: ↑

Space Force might want to rebuild the telescope, according to info buried in this piece.

NASA weighing options for future planetary radar capabilities after Arecibo

With the Arecibo radio telescope to be decommissioned, NASA is beginning to consider options for future planetary radar capabilities, including potential cooperation with the U.S. Space Force.

NASA has used the 305-meter-diameter radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico for years as a radar, particularly for studies of near Earth asteroids. While the radar isn’t used to discover asteroids, it can refine their orbits and help characterize them.

However, the National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns the observatory, announced Nov. 19 it will decommission the telescope after engineering analyses showed the telescope was at risk of collapse. Two cables that help support an instrument platform suspended over the dish snapped, one in August and the other Nov. 6, and engineering studies concluded the risk of an uncontrolled collapse is too great to allow crews to repair the damage. NSF announced early Dec. 1 that the instrument platform collapsed overnight, with no injuries reported.

“This is a hard thing to have to take,” Lindley Johnson, director of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, said at a Nov. 30 meeting of the agency’s Planetary Science Advisory Committee. His office funds the planetary radar work at Arecibo.

The closure of Arecibo, he said, will have “a slight negative impact” on NASA’s planetary defense work. NASA has another radar system at the Goldstone Observatory in California that can also be used for observing near Earth asteroids and other objects. The Goldstone radar is back in operation after recently installing a new klystron.

The Goldstone radar has some advantages over Arecibo, including being able to see more of the sky and finer resolution. However, Arecibo’s more powerful radar has a greater range, allowing it to observe more distant objects.

Another disadvantage for Goldstone is that it is located near restricted military airspace, which requires coordination for radar observations that can make it difficult to use for time-sensitive studies. Johnson said that process has improved somewhat.

Johnson argued that the closure of Arecibo presents an opportunity to examine the future of planetary radar systems. “It’s really time to be looking at the next generation of planetary radar capabilities,” he said. That’s likely to use arrays of smaller dishes rather than one monolithic dish, like Arecibo.

Old facilities, he added, are “high maintenance” and difficult to keep operate. “Technology has moved on from 30 years ago,” when Arecibo first got planetary radar capabilities, he said. “We need to take advantage of the new technologies.”

Any future planetary radar system would likely be done in partnership with other organizations. With few exceptions, notably the Infrared Telescope Facility observatory in Hawaii, NASA does not operate ground-based telescopes, focusing instead on space-based observatories.

The NSF has not discussed what plans, if any, it has for a successor to Arecibo, but Johnson suggested one possibility for NASA might be cooperation with the military. “We do definitely have an opportunity and an interest in partnering with the U.S. Space Force on a more capable radar system,” he said.

The Space Force’s interest in such a radar, he said, would be to track objects in cislunar space, something that would require a radar more powerful than existing ones that are limited largely to tracking objects in low Earth orbit. The Pentagon has shown growing interest in monitoring objects in the region between the Earth and the moon, including an experimental spacecraft mission called the Cislunar Highway Patrol System, or CHIPS, under development by the Air Force Research Laboratory.

“Those are the kinds of things that are being talked about,” Johnson said. “What agencies can NASA partner with for a future planetary radar capability?”

Some members of the advisory committee, though, weren’t ready to give up on Arecibo, asking NASA officials if all the options for repairing the radio telescope there had been exhausted. “I think it would be good to have some additional study before final decisions are made, but the NSF will have the lead on it,” Johnson said.

“Arecibo is an NSF facility, and the responsibilities for ground-based observatories lie with NSF. It’s not in NASA’s purview,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division.

She emphasized the NSF made the decision to decommission the Arecibo radio telescope based on safety. “This is NSF’s decision to make,” she said, “and we’re supporting them in their decision to put safety first.”
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And we'll make Mars pay for it!

Tuckerfan · Jan 1, 2021

Puerto Rico's governor is pledging money to try and rebuild the telescope.

Puerto Rico government supports rebuilding Arecibo

The governor of Puerto Rico says she backs rebuilding the Arecibo radio observatory, but a final decision on whether, and how, to reconstruct the giant telescope could take years.

Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced signed an executive order Dec. 28 stating it was the formal policy of the commonwealth to rebuild the 305-meter radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory. The telescope’s 900-ton observing platform fell to the dish below when several cables snapped early Dec. 1, weeks after the National Science Foundation (NSF) said it was unsafe to repair cables at the telescope that previously broke.

“The Government of Puerto Rico states, as a matter of public policy, its conviction to the reconstruction of the Arecibo Radio Telescope and the prompt resumption of world class science and education at the Arecibo Observatory,” the order states.

The order adds that the Puerto Rican government foresees rebuilding a “newly designed” telescope that would have a larger effective aperture and wider field of view. It also calls for a more powerful radar transmitter, which is used for solar system observations such as characterizing near Earth asteroids.

The order states the government is “assigning and allocating” $8 million to start the reconstruction work. Vázquez Garced, in a separate statement, said the funding is from budget surpluses from previous years, but didn’t elaborate further on the source of the funding. The funding, she said, would be used for removing debris from the telescope’s collapse and other environmental remediation work.

The $8 million, though, is only a small down payment on the cost of rebuilding the telescope, with informal estimates in the astronomy community projecting it to cost several hundred million dollars. Vázquez Garced, in her executive order, gave no estimate herself but said it would be funded by “state, federal and private sources (including public-private partnerships and state-federal partnerships).”

The NSF, notably, has not committed to rebuilding Arecibo. At a briefing two days after the telescope’s collapse, agency officials said their focus was on the assessment of the damage and cleanup efforts.

“NSF has a very well-defined process for funding and constructing large-scale infrastructure, including telescopes,” Ralph Gaume, director of NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences, said at that briefing. “It’s a multiyear process that involves congressional appropriations and the assessment and needs of the scientific community. So, it’s very early for us to comment on the replacement.”

Congress, which would have to allocate any federal funding for rebuilding Arecibo, did not earmark any money for doing so in the fiscal year 2021 spending bill passed in December. However, the report accompanying the bill directed NSF to prepare a study on the telescope’s collapse and cleanup efforts, as well as “the process for determining whether to establish comparable technology at the site, along with any associated cost estimates.”

That report is due to Congress 60 days after the bill was enacted, which took place Dec. 27. However, it is not uncommon for agencies to deliver such reports weeks, or even months, late.

At the same time, the astrophysics decadal survey, which sets priorities for both space-based and ground-based astronomy for the next 10 years, is completing its study, now scheduled for release in the spring. The NSF said in December that it informed the survey’s steering committee of Arecibo’s collapse but did not make any special requests for it to evaluate the impact of the loss of the telescope.
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steve2^4 · Jan 2, 2021

The PR govt should not be pledging money to pure science, they have enough on their plate with the day to day.

Tuckerfan · Jan 2, 2021

steve2^4 said: ↑

The PR govt should not be pledging money to pure science, they have enough on their plate with the day to day.
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I’m sure the telescope brought in some tourist dollars, not to mention the various scientists who traveled to the facility for research.

steve2^4 · Jan 2, 2021

They have beaches for that.

Most of the science is done far from the source.

Tuckerfan · Jan 2, 2021

steve2^4 said: ↑

They have beaches for that.

Most of the science is done far from the source.
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I don't know about you, but I'd rather live in a society where a government was more willing to throw money at scientific research to boost tourism than they were something superficial like tax cuts for beachside resorts.

steve2^4 · Jan 2, 2021

Throw money at rebuilding schools damaged in hurricanes.

Tuckerfan · Jan 2, 2021

steve2^4 said: ↑

Throw money at rebuilding schools damaged in hurricanes.
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One might argue that so long as there are homeless people in the US that we shouldn't spend money on things like the space program or SETI.

Lanzman · Jan 2, 2021

Yes, and we call the people making that argument "idiots."

steve2^4 · Jan 2, 2021

I'm fine with federal agencies doing space exploration. Local government not so much.

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