28 September 2017

Arecibo still operable

Space.com has an article by Hanneke Weitering about the radio telescope in Puerto Rico:

Nearly a week after Hurricane Maria pulverized Puerto Rico, staff members at the island's Arecibo Observatory are remaining optimistic as they continue to survey the damage to their enormous radio telescope (photo).
The Arecibo Observatory contains the second-largest radio telescope in the world, and that telescope has been out of service ever since Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on 20 September. Maria hit the island as a Category 4 hurricane, leaving behind a swath of downed trees, battered buildings and gushing rivers running through the streets.
While Puerto Rico suffered catastrophic damage across the island, the Arecibo Observatory suffered "relatively minor damage," Francisco Córdova, the director of the observatory, said in a Facebook post on Sunday, 24September.
Last week, officials reported that a hundred-foot line-feed antenna that was suspended from a platform above the telescope's dish had broken off and punctured some of the mesh panels that make up the thousand-foot dish.
A smaller, secondary dish located nearby on the premises was reported "lost" on Friday, 22 September, by officials with the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), which helps to run the observatory.  However, officials are now saying that the damage to this secondary dish wasn't quite as serious as they thought. "There was some damage to it, but not a lot," Nicholas White, a senior vice president with USRA, told NPR. "So far, the only damage that's confirmed is that one of the line feeds on the antenna for one of the radar systems was lost," he added.
Along with the aforementioned Facebook post, Córdova shared a photo of two Arecibo employees standing in front of the damaged telescope dish and holding up the flag of Puerto Rico. "Still standing after Hurricane Maria!" Córdova wrote in the post.
Rico says it's a great piece of technology; glad it's working.

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