Arecibo Observatory Will Be Torn Down
NSF begins planning for decommissioning of Arecibo Observatory’s 305-meter telescope due to safety concerns
“Following a review of engineering assessments that found damage to the Arecibo Observatory cannot be stabilized without risk to construction workers and staff at the facility, the U.S. National Science Foundation will begin plans to decommission the 305-meter telescope, which for 57 years has served as a world-class resource for radio astronomy, planetary, solar system and geospace research.”
Keith’s note: Having done crowd funding activities that raised ~$100K – LOIRP & ISEE-3 – let me just suggest that if the NSF & UCF people had half a brain they’d sell pieces of Arecibo dish for a GoFundMe. Who wouldn’t want to buy a piece of something that amazing to help replace it with something even better?
That is a good idea Keith.
“Following a review of engineering assessments that found damage to the Arecibo Observatory cannot be stabilized without risk to construction workers and staff at the facility, the U.S.
Were is the engineering assessments report? Is is public?
I looks like a terrible option, but the instrument platform may not be able to be lowered slowly to the ground, the only option is to cut the cables and let it drop down below. Sell the scrap, like Keith said to raise the money to rebuild it. The geography and support facilities are still there. A new platform could be built with modern techniques and materials to make it lighter, possibly. The 3 towers may be salvageable and with refurbishment could work for another 60 years. Lastly, the reflector surface is rebuilt underneath. How much would that cost?
There wasn’t enough funding to keep the original from falling apart, there just isn’t enough to support building a replacement. However, putting up some smaller dishes and keeping the site active for radio astronomy may be a good option. As you said, the support facilities are there, it’s already a radio quiet zone, etc. It’ll be a lot easier to build a true replacement in 10 years if the site hasn’t been abandoned for a decade.
“Were is the engineering assessments report?”
Here: https://www.nsf.gov/news/ra…
What would be “even better”? Genuine question… I’d really like to know what leading proposals for advanced radio astronomy observatories are, and what would they cost?
You may have to wait until next spring for a good answer. The National Academies are in the process of conducting the astrophysics decadal survey, with a report due in spring of 2021. That’s where you’ll find the consensus of the radio astronomy community on the highest priorities for new observatories. Until then, you can wade through all the white papers the Survey solicited and received. But since anyone can write one, and they got a whole bunch, I’m not sure going through all of them is worth the effort.
I remain a fan-boy of the Lunar Farside Telescope, assuming that the world had a few $100Bs to burn.
Once Starship-Lunar is up and flying, I’m curious how far down they could bring that price tag. Currently a pipe-dream, I know, but progress is being made. If launch costs were no longer a big price driver, what are the big problems?
Data relay from the far side? Could they modify some Starlink satellites and create a mesh network, or are they not rad-hardened enough to survive outside the Van Allen belts?
Remote construction? Problem 1 helps solve problem 2, but you still need to design and build the robots to do the heavy lifting. That could cost a lot. That said, you could sell it as R&D / risk reduction for lunar habitat construction.
Power / heating systems that can survive a 2-week lunar night? That’s a nasty problem. Even the Ames Viper team is not expecting the rover to live past the first season at the poles and very much doubts it could survive a “winter” of little to no sun at all.
I’m curious if anyone has picked out a spot the far side that shows promise.
Check out the FARSIDE concept
https://www.colorado.edu/pr…
Surviving the cold isn’t a big problem. In fact, that’s when you want to collect your data, since the Sun is pretty bright at radio frequencies. It’s more a matter of decent insulation. There’s a fairly recent concept (after the paper above) for distributing the tether & antennas using 4 of the JPL Axel two-wheeled rovers.
As far as location – you want to be sort of in the “middle” of the far-side of the moon, so you get the best shielding. And, since all the “rest” of the lunar missions seem to be heading for the poles, that keeps interference from those missions from causing a problem.
A plethora of future orbiters radiating noise *is* a problem, since spacecraft typically don’t have requirements on their low frequency (<10MHz) noise emissions.
And I remain convinced it’s an example of planet-bound thinking, based on the false assumption that you need something to build on. There’s literally no advantage to putting it on the moon, and the rotation, geographic limitations, cost of access, temperature extremes, and electrically charged dust all make the moon a terrible place to put a telescope. For the same money, you could build a far more capable and more flexible orbital instrument.
I thought the advantage of the Lunar Farside Telescope was being in the Moon’s shadow of Earth’s radio transmissions. Does your orbital instrument have that?
Potentially. Something orbiting within 950 km of the Earth-Moon L2 point would always be in the Moon’s shadow. But staying within 950 km of the L2 point would require a pretty tight halo orbit. It’s possible, but I think it would require frequent station keeping maneuvers (and the propellent consumption that would imply.)
I was going to ask what impact this would have on SETI @ Home, but then I discovered they quit distributing work units and went into hibernation back in March.
It’s a shame really. So much history in that giant old dish and it seems almost a kind of vandalism to tear it down.
However, in the end, Arecibo is an monument to a past era in radio astronomy. Multi-dish arrays are the future, as the VLA and the EHT have both proven. If it is genuinely impossible to fix or even mothball safely then there seems no other realistic choice.
The one thing we can’t do (or at least don’t do) with arrays is broadcast. Arecibo did a lot of work on active radar studies of asteroids and even moons in the outer solar system. Without it, the best telescope we have for that sort of work is the 70-meter DSN antenna at Goldstone, when it can spare time from communicating with spacecraft.
And note that Arecibo and Goldstone do a lot of radar work together with multi-dish arrays, the big dishes providing the illumination and the arrays providing the resolution. You’ll get less science out of the arrays with Arecibo gone.
I wonder if there are better solutions, or maybe the overall infrastructure all around really not able to support it as a first rate facility. Puerto Rico has taken a heavy pounding over the years in addition to hurricanes. It’s as if there is not much strategic importance. I’m thinking was it a product of big science programs so popular in 1950s, 1960s. I don’t know if the big dish in China is effective but with it larger they can use it for bragging rights like who’s got the biggest rocket (which can be a plus if it works).
Now here’s an opportunity for some amazing PR but also Science. Musk, or Bezos could buy the observatory and rebuild it.
I’d love to buy a piece of history, and support the observatory. Can we ask Elon Musk to use a little of his 90 Billion to build a new one? Call it the Musk Observatory!
Sad news. Arecibo is about the same age as the DSN 70m Antenna DSS-14 at Goldstone. That one isn’t going away any time soon. Of course it’s a much drier climate there. The NASA DSN has an aggressive maintenance program.
What do you mean by “soon”? Unless the plan has changed, NASA is going to be phasing out the 70-m DSN stations in favor of building more 34-m stations and arraying them as needed (and making uses shift from X to Ka band, which allegedly increases data rates by a factor of four.) That DSN maintenance program takes antennas off line and the necessary time off line for maintenance is only going to increase. Fortunately, and with relatively few exceptions, they do enough scheduled maintenance to minimize down time from unexpected faults. That’s much easier for users to work around.
The downtimes are Depot Level maintenance for big maintenance or upgrade items – for example the 70m Antenna is Australia has just had a major downtime and upgrade – hence my comment that they won’t be retired any time soon, as far as assigning a value to that, I don’t know. For the new antennas the there is only one BWG to go, at Goldstone. Additionally, all antennas continue to be subject to a preventive maintenance program on a regular daily basis.
I suspect NASA will keep operating the 70-meter stations until all (or most) of the current missions are over. The plan to retire them in favor of 34-meters, as I understand it, does rely on a shift from X to Ka band for downlink. Spacecraft in flight or too far along in development can’t shift to Ka band. Since the DSN isn’t going to just cut them off, that means keeping the 70-meters going. So I suspect the timeline to retire them is tied to the operating lifetime of current spacecraft.
As we saw in the recent election, with trump picking up Florida easily, the Democratic Party needs to rebuild its popularity and support among Latinos. The economy of Puerto Rico desperately needs to be rebuilt after hurricane Maria and neglect by the trump administration. Rebuilding Arecibo would be a good way to create jobs in Puerto Rico. The new Biden administration might be amenable to it.
Will they build a new one?