The
Arecibo Telescope was a 305-meter-diameter (1,000 ft) spherical-reflector
radio telescope built into a natural
sinkhole at the
Arecibo Observatory located near
Arecibo, Puerto Rico. A cable-mount steerable
receiver and several
radar transmitters for emitting signals were mounted 150 meters (492 ft) above the
parabolic antenna. Completed in November 1963, the Arecibo Telescope was the world's largest single-aperture telescope for 53 years, until it was surpassed in July 2016 by the
Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in
Guizhou, China. Following a long period of declining maintenance exacerbated by
Hurricane Maria and two earthquakes, the Arecibo Telescope's receiver cables suffered a catastrophic failure that culminated in the collapse of the receiver platform at around 6:55 a.m. AST (10:55 UTC) on December 1, 2020, as captured in this video. The collapse of the receiver structure and cables onto the dish caused extensive additional damage, and ultimately resulted in the decision to demolish the remaining structure in 2022.
Video credit: National Science Foundation