Preliminary investigation offers possible cause of Arecibo Observatory telescope collapse - Space.com

An ongoing investigation of the December collapse of the iconic radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico offers early evidence that a manufacturing issue may have contributed to the failure.

The telescope's massive science platform, which weighed in at 900 tons, was suspended above the vast radio dish by three dozen supporting cables.

But in August 2020, one of those cables slipped out of its socket; before the failure could be repaired, a second cable snapped outright in November.

Engineers have been investigating the cables since August, and crews have been cleaning up the debris and monitoring environmental concerns since the collapse,observatory director Francisco Cordova said during a panel discussion today (Jan. 21).

"The site cleanup and the debris removal really is ongoing," Cordova told the panel, which is focused on small solar system objects like asteroids in order to inform the National Academies committee that's putting together the document that will shape planetary science priorities for the next decade.

The next priority is to clear out remaining platform debris; to reach that material, work crews have deconstructed part of the massive Arecibo reflector dish, which measures 1,000 feet (305 meters) across.

These 12 cables were added in the 1990s, when the observatory installed the massive hanging dome that distinguishes the telescope's appearance in the movie "Contact" from its previous cameo in James Bond's "GoldenEye." The first cable to fail was one of these auxiliary cables, which slipped out of its socket where it connected to one of the three supporting towers surrounding the dish.

"Preliminary investigation has revealed that there was a manufacturing error in those cables — in particular, the socketing procedure wasn't done appropriately, and that led to advanced degradation of that particular structural element," Cordova said.

In addition, Cordova said that personnel are evaluating debris being removed for potential historic importance so that items can be saved.

"Certainly, there's typically not a single item that contributed but a multitude of items that contributed to the particular failure," Cordova said!