Arecibo Observatory destruction (Drone footage)

[HVM]

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has collapsed, after weeks of concern from scientists over the fate of what was once the world's largest single-dish radio telescope. Now National Science Foundation has published footage of the collapse:

 

[CyberGus]

Looks like drone footage from the Nikola factory

 

[nwdiver]

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has collapsed, after weeks of concern from scientists over the fate of what was once the world's largest single-dish radio telescope. Now National Science Foundation has published footage of the collapse:

That sucks. I hope they rebuild. It was an incredibly unique facility with one-of-a-kind capabilities. There were several scientists from Puerto Rico that wrote about how they were inspired by Arecibo.

Scott Manley did a good review. I hadn't realized this previously but Arecibo was more of a radar station than just a telescope. There are other radio telescopes that can easily do the same work as Arecibo but no other radar stations. IIRC Arecibo was able to send a 1MW radar signal to get very precise distance and speed measurements on objects like Asteroids.

 

[swaltner]

Here’s hoping they do rebuild that facility. I always enjoyed seeing it in movies.

What struck me about the drone footage was how fast the cascading failure happened. One strand failed, then another, then another, then the whole structure. A very visual display of how quickly cascading failures happen. Good on the folks at the observatory to setup extra cameras to record its eventual collapse.