Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico collapses as engineers feared - The Verge
The massive Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico collapsed in on itself overnight.On November 19th, the agency announced that the remaining cables at Arecibo ran the risk of failing, which could lead to the platform’s collapse.
Knowing this was imminent, NSF said it planned to demolish Arecibo in a controlled manner, concluding that there was no safe way to save the observatory.
At the time, NSF and the University of Central Florida, which oversees day-to-day operations at Arecibo, vowed to investigate the failure and fix the damage in order to get the observatory up and running again.
Dennis Vazquez via Facebook: He took these pictures of the collapse of the Arecibo Observatory.The NSF concluded that Arecibo would eventually collapse if no actions were taken; they just didn’t know when the collapse might occur.
Not wanting to see the observatory demolished, a Puerto Rican scientist launched a petition on Change.org to urge the NSF to repair Arecibo