Remembering Arecibo observatory

This is probably the most spectacular footage ever captured by drone. It shows the rapid unplanned disassembly of the Arecibo Observatory superstructure.

Arecibo observatory via Google Maps.

The 1000' (304.8m) radio telescope was featured in the movies Contact and Goldeneye (among others).

Today she lies in ruins.

Cables snapping in mid-2020 confounded engineers, who had no clue as to how to shore up the the supports without putting techs in mortal peril. They were working on a plan to safely decommission the telescope.

Before they could decide on how to proceed, the gantry fell on 1 Dec 2020. This was recorded on two separate cameras, one of them being drone footage during inspection.

A ground camera was set up to observe the gantry.

Gonna be a challenge to observe the DART mission without her...