Arecibo Telescope Decommissioned, Investing $5.5 Million to Build Science Education Center

The Arecibo radio astronomy telescope in Puerto Rico in the United States broke in 2020 due to the aging of the support structure, causing the support tower tip to break, causing the 900-ton signal receiving equipment to fall, and the steel cable was also destroyed. After nearly three years of evaluation, the National Science Foundation recently announced that it would abandon the function of rebuilding its observatory and

change it into a science education center focusing on life sciences and computer science.

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The new education center is called “Arecibo Center for Culturally Relevant and Inclusive Science Education, Computational Skills, and Community Engagement”, or “Arecibo C3 for short” "It is expected to be opened in 2024. The National Science Foundation of the United States is expected to invest a total of US$5.5 million (note on this site: currently about 40.15 million yuan) in the next five years for expansion

. The telescope was built in 1963 and has been an important education and scientific research center in Puerto Rico and a symbol of the region. The Arecibo radio telescope has created many scientific research results, discovered the rotation period of Mercury, the first pulsar, and proved the existence of neutron stars. At the same time, the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics was also won based on the observations of this telescope.

The Arecibo Telescope Observatory is a historic facility that has been in existence for nearly 60 years. However, as maintenance costs continued to increase, it became increasingly difficult to operate the observatory. In 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and slightly damaged the main reflector of the Arecibo telescope. However, due to the delay in funds for repair, the observatory's steel cable used to suspend the receiver on the main reflecting surface accidentally broke at the end of 2020, causing damage to about 1/3 of the area of ​​the reflecting surface.

Puerto Rico previously Considering the reputation of Arecibo Observatory, it was originally planned to be restored in 2021, but it has now been decided to turn it into a scientific education center

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