"So the NSF wants to know, how should we monitor these? Because every structure in the course of degrading sends you messages."Īt Arecibo, those messages went unaddressed.Ī view of the science platform from the center of the iconic radio dish at Arecibo Observatory. "Every one of these, by nature of being cutting-edge scientific instruments, puts a brand new design to its test over an extended period of time," McCarthy said. Rubin Observatory in Chile that is scheduled to begin observations next year. In astronomy alone, NSF's facilities include key observatories like the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array ( ALMA) in Chile, the equator-crossing Gemini Observatory and the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) outposts in Washington and Louisiana. But if all goes well, the investigation will identify the factors that let the telescope become so delicate without anyone realizing how dire the situation was - factors that may well be present at other facilities the NSF supports. "Finding out what went wrong at Arecibo doesn't really help them with Arecibo, because Arecibo fell down," Mike Nolan, a planetary scientist now at the University of Arizona who was director of Arecibo Observatory from 2008 to 2011, told .Īnd no other facility, NSF or otherwise, sports a design anything like Arecibo's massive dish and hanging platform. Whatever the committee finds will be cold comfort to the scientists who worked at Arecibo or used its data - and that's three separate communities, since the instrument did key work in radio astronomy, planetary radar observations and atmospheric science.
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