The giant radio telescope at the Arecibo observatory (Puerto Rico) suddenly fell down, ending decades of discovery of alien worlds.
According to RT, the 820-ton core of the Arecibo telescope broke off the cable and punctured the 305m wide dish below.

The incident occurred Monday night, November 30, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Previously, Arecibo was closed in August after an auxiliary cable broke, creating a 30m long crack on the surface of the disc.

After another cable break in early November, NSF announced that engineers were preparing to shut down the giant telescope.

Funding to maintain Arecibo’s operations has steadily decreased over the past decade, despite opposition from the scientific community.

The Arecibo telescope was originally designed to track Soviet satellites and ballistic missiles in the 1950s.

By the 1960s, when construction was completed, Arecibo was converted into a space telescope, mainly operating to explore alien worlds.

Funded by NSF and NASA, the Arecibo telescope has been at the forefront of astronomical exploration for five decades.

Arecibo was used to determine Mercury’s rotation period, prove the existence of neutron stars, directly image an asteroid, and monitor mysterious radio bursts from the most distant regions of the planet. universe.

Data from Arecibo has been used to search for extraterrestrial life since the 1970s, and the telescope was used in 1974 to shoot the “Arecibo message” 25,000 light-years into space. The message includes numbers, stick figures, chemical formulas and raw images of the Arecibo telescope itself.

Arecibo’s iconic structure was used in the final chase scene of the 1995 James Bond film “Goldeneye.”