Arecibo radio telescope (Arecibo)

Puerto Rico / Ponce / Utuado / Arecibo
 science, ruins, radar station, telescope, destroyed, radio telescope, notable by news, movie / film / TV location
The observatory's 305-m radio telescope is the largest single-aperture telescope ever to be constructed. When functional, it carried out three major areas of research: radio astronomy, aeronomy, and radar observations of solar system objects.

The telescope has been used in the James Bond movie GoldenEye and in the film Contact. It received international recognition in 1999 when it began to collect data for the SETI@home project
www.naic.edu/

Already having suffered significant damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017 and earthquakes in 2019 and 2020, the dish suffered catastrophic structural failure on December 1st, 2020, when the remaining support cables for the antenna and dome assembly failed, sending these components plunging 450 feet onto the dish below. The National Science Foundation (NSF) had already announced plans to decommission and dismantle the telescope in November of 2020, before the total structural failure.
www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=301674
apnews.com/article/technology-arecibo-observatory-puert...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssHkMWcGat4
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Telescope
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   18°20'39"N   66°45'9"W

Comments

  • Goldeneye is awesome
  • classified use during the early day's, NSA's moon reflection, SIGINT/ELINT on the USSR
  • I would've though that it was so castro could get free HBO but I then found out I had the wrong island.