A radio telescope that was once the world’s largest has collapsed at Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory after nearly 60 years in operation, according to reports.
The 900-ton instrument platform came crashing to the ground Tuesday, damaging the 1,000-foot-wide radio dish and surrounding facilities, but no one was injured, the U.S. National Science Foundation said in a statement.
An investigation is ongoing into the collapse, but initial findings indicate that all three of the telescope’s support towers broke off, and that the observatory’s learning center sustained significant damage.
The National Science Foundation announced plans to decommission the telescope in November after a second cable attached to the support tower snapped.
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The area around the telescope had since been ordered to be cleared of unauthorized personnel.
The radio telescope was the largest in the world until 2016, when China started operating a larger one.
It was also a popular tourist attraction — especially after it appeared in scenes of the 1995 James Bond film “GoldenEye.”
The telescope went into operation in 1963 and 57 years later remained one of the most sensitive in the world.
In 1974, U.S. astronomers Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor used it to discover the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16 — two orbiting neutron stars — and to indirectly observe gravitational waves.
Radio telescopes collect radio waves from space that are converted into images.
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