{"id":148762,"date":"2022-10-23T18:23:01","date_gmt":"2022-10-23T23:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/the-most-iconic-radio-telescope-ever-is-gone-for-good-u-s-government-declares"},"modified":"2022-10-23T18:23:01","modified_gmt":"2022-10-23T23:23:01","slug":"the-most-iconic-radio-telescope-ever-is-gone-for-good-u-s-government-declares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/the-most-iconic-radio-telescope-ever-is-gone-for-good-u-s-government-declares","title":{"rendered":"The most iconic radio telescope ever is gone for good, U.S. government declares"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-most-iconic-radio-telescope-ever-is-gone-for-good-u-s-government-declares2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The collapse of Arecibo\u2019s radio telescope was a devastating blow to the radio astronomy community. Issues began in 2017 for the nearly 55-year-old telescope when Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, shearing off one of the 29-meter (96-foot) antennas that was suspended above the telescope\u2019s 305-meter (1,000-foot) dish, with falling debris puncturing the dish in several places.<\/p>\n<p>In early 2020, earthquakes temporarily closed the observatory for safety reasons; then a succession of cable failures ultimately led to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/149029\/the-arecibo-observatory-platform-has-collapsed\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\">December 2020 collapse of the 900-ton instrument platform<\/a> suspended above the observatory, which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/149093\/now-you-can-watch-actual-video-of-arecibo-collapsing-if-you-dare\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\">crashed down on the iconic telescope\u2019s giant dish.<\/a> This collapse officially ended any possible hopes of refurbishing the famous observatory.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, many have called for the telescope to be rebuilt or for building an even better replacement telescope at the site. Instead, the NSF wants Arecibo to serve as a hub for STEM education and outreach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The collapse of Arecibo\u2019s radio telescope was a devastating blow to the radio astronomy community. Issues began in 2017 for the nearly 55-year-old telescope when Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, shearing off one of the 29-meter (96-foot) antennas that was suspended above the telescope\u2019s 305-meter (1,000-foot) dish, with falling debris puncturing the dish in [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":631,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,32,1490,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology","category-education","category-government","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/631"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}