{"id":111720,"date":"2020-08-11T12:00:50","date_gmt":"2020-08-11T16:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=111720"},"modified":"2022-06-27T14:02:55","modified_gmt":"2022-06-27T18:02:55","slug":"broken-cable-damages-arecibo-observatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/broken-cable-damages-arecibo-observatory\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken Cable Damages Arecibo Observatory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the auxiliary cables that helps support a metal platform in place above the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, broke on Monday (Aug. 10) causing a 100-foot-long gash on the telescope\u2019s reflector dish. Operations at the UCF-managed observatory are stopped until repairs can be made.<\/p>\n<p>The break occurred about 2:45 a.m. When the three-inch cable fell it also damaged about 6-8 panels in the Gregorian Dome and twisted the platform used to access the dome. It is not yet clear what caused the cable to break.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a team of experts assessing the situation,\u201d says Francisco Cordova, the director of the observatory. \u201cOur focus is assuring the safety of our staff, protecting the facilities and equipment, and restoring the facility to full operations as soon as possible, so it can continue to assist scientists around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>UCF manages the NSF-facility under a cooperative agreement with Universidad Ana G. M\u00e9ndez and Yang Enterprises Inc. The facility, which is home to one of the most powerful telescopes on the planet, is used by scientists around the world to conduct research in the areas of atmospheric sciences, planetary sciences, radio astronomy and radar astronomy. Arecibo is also home to a team that runs the Planetary Radar Project supported by NASA\u2019s Near-Earth Object Observations Program in NASA\u2019s Planetary Defense Coordination Office through a grant awarded to UCF.<\/p>\n<p>The facility has endured many hurricanes, tropical storms and earthquakes since it was built 50 years ago. Repairs from Hurricane Maria in 2017 are ongoing. Through it all, the facility has continued to contribute to significant <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/space\/\">breakthroughs in space research<\/a> in the area of gravitational waves, asteroid characterization, planetary exploration and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The National Science Foundation facility is closed while engineers review the damage and assess the extent of repairs that will be needed to bring the telescope back online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":111721,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[5,6,23],"tags":[16967,982,1775,14916,4361],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-111720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colleges","category-community","category-research","tag-arecibo-observatory","tag-college-of-sciences","tag-florida-space-instit","tag-research","tag-space"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.3 (Yoast SEO v27.1.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Broken Cable Damages Arecibo Observatory | UCF News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One of the auxiliary cables that helps support a metal platform in place above the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, broke on Monday (Aug. 10) causing a\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/broken-cable-damages-arecibo-observatory\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Broken Cable Damages Arecibo Observatory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the auxiliary cables that helps support a metal platform in place above the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, broke on Monday (Aug. 10) causing a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/broken-cable-damages-arecibo-observatory\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"University of Central Florida News | UCF Today\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/UCF\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-08-11T16:00:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-06-27T18:02:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/20\/files\/2020\/08\/WEBAreciboDishDamage.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Zenaida Kotala\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@UCF\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@UCF\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Zenaida Kotala\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/broken-cable-damages-arecibo-observatory\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/broken-cable-damages-arecibo-observatory\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Zenaida Kotala\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/4f0fdedfa744a8bfddd06132e6ce9b5e\"},\"headline\":\"Broken Cable Damages Arecibo Observatory\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-11T16:00:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-06-27T18:02:55+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/broken-cable-damages-arecibo-observatory\/\"},\"wordCount\":284,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/broken-cable-damages-arecibo-observatory\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/20\/files\/2020\/08\/WEBAreciboDishDamage.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Arecibo Observatory\",\"College of Sciences\",\"Florida Space institute\",\"Research\",\"space\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Colleges &amp; 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