The Aricebo Roof Restoration Fund

A public Appeal on behalf of the Aricebo Radio Telescope Project

In December of this year, the aricebo radio telescope collapsed with devestating results. Plagued by years of neglect and underfunding by both governmental and scientific establishments, the resulting lack of maintainance created the weaknesses that eventually lead to the final demise of the telescope. Built in 1963 the telescope provided scientists with a tool that could recieve radio data from distant stars with a clarity that was previously unobtainable. Further more the dish had an active component that allowed the imaging of astronomical objects like asteroids and Near Earth Objects(rocks) as far away as the Jovian orbit by radar and was, upto the time of it's collapse, the only telescope able to do so. The Construction of the Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope in China has now claimed the title of the worlds biggest radio telescope, but only Aricebo has the ability to activly search for new objects within the solar system and because of this, the telescope must be rebuilt. The telescope came the notice of the general public as the star of the film 'Golden Eye' in 1995 but it's scientific achievements were globally aclaimed. These include ...

1964 - The First Acurate measurement of Mercurys Rotation

1974 - The Discovery of the first binary pulsar.

1989 - The first radio imaging of an asteroid.

1992 - The first discovery of an exoplanet.

These achevements could not have been achieved without this instrument which is a tesiment to it's design. The upgrade in 1997 added a Dual Gregorian focus system to the suspended reciever array which allowed a more precise reception from a designated patch of sky. This however, exceded the original load bearing capacity of the support structure and only the addition of additional supporting hausers and added support towers allowed the structure to with stand the stresses of the aditional load. Although the safety margin was reduced, the telescope managed to safely withstand the full force of hurricane 'Maria' in 2017. The upgrading of the structure meant that greater attention had to be paid to the maintainance of the supporting stucture if safety margins were to be maintained. This did not happen. For political and financial reasons, the observatory did not recieve the funding it needed to maintain the telescope and as a result, structural weaknesses crept into the supporting structure and on the First of December 2020, the triangular reciever structure collapsed as the result of a cascade failure of one of the main support cables. The falling structure ireparably damaged the reciever array, tore open the aluminium reflector panels of the main dish and caused the loss of 30feet of reinforced concrete from the northern support tower, damaging the buildings underneath.