They get 100,000 signatures for the White House to respond to a request to rebuild the Arecibo radio telescope

A petition on the White House website seeking that the U.S. Congress allocate the funds needed to rebuild the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope, which collapsed on Dec. 1, got the target of 100,000 signatures.

“Our petition for #RebuildTheAreciboObservatory has reached 100,000 signatures !!! ‘THANK YOU to each of the people who signed the petition, shared their stories and fought for the future of science in Puerto Rico to help us achieve this goal !!! “, Wrote the organization Save the Arecibo Observatory on its official Twitter account.

They can also read: They collect signatures for the White House to take care of the reconstruction of the Arecibo radio telescope

For the White House to express itself in this respect, they needed to collect the signatures in 30 days. The application was created on December 2, so they had until January 1 to get it.

“This telescope had many capabilities that cannot be replaced by any existing or planned installation. It had the most powerful and sensitive planetary radar system in the world, providing an incomparable ability to track and characterize asteroids close to Earth … We ask Congress to allocate funds to build a new Arecibo radio telescope with more capabilities than the previous telescope to maintain American leadership in planetary defense, astronomy, and ionospheric studies; and inspire a new generation of scientists, ”reads the petition.

You can also read: Arecibo Radio Telescope may have been saved

The United States Congress approved last Monday night to call on the National Science Foundation (NSF), owner of the Arecibo Observatory, to present in 60 days a report on the possibility of restoring a technology similar to that of the radio telescope, the process of cleaning the area and the damage caused by the collapse.

At around 7:55 a.m. on December 1, one of the cables leading to one of the three towers that supported the 305-meter platform — composed of the azimuth arm that supported the Gregorian dome — failed and went off. causing the 900-ton structure to collapse catastrophically and fall from a height of 450 feet.

However, it all started last August when another support cable came loose. In early November, a second cable, this time from the main ones, was broken in the same tower. Multiple evaluations by independent engineering companies found that the telescope’s structure was in “danger of suffering a catastrophic failure” and that its cables were no longer able to withstand the loads for which they were designed.

Following the reports, the NSF decided not to fix the radio telescope and announced that it would confiscate it.

The director of the Arecibo Observatory, Francisco Córdoba, Pointed out after the collapse that the NSF did not accept a series of proposals that, in due course, could have been executed and perhaps saved the radio telescope.