The Hubble Space Telescope was carried to space inside the space shuttle Discovery and then released into low-Earth orbit. The James Webb Space Telescope was squeezed inside the nose cone of an Ariane 5 rocket and then launched. It deployed its mirror and shade on its way to its home at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point. However, the ISS was assembled in space with components launched at different times. Could it be a model for building future space telescopes and other space facilities? The Universe has a lot of dark corners that need to be peered into. That’s why we’re driven to build more powerful telescopes, which means larger mirrors. However, it becomes increasingly difficult to launch them into space inside rocket nose cones. Since we don’t have space shuttles anymore, this leads us to a natural conclusion: assemble our space telescopes in space using powerful robots. New research in the journal Acta Astronautica examines the viability of using walking robots to build space te
In 1963, the Arecibo Observatory became operational on the island of Puerto Rico. Measuring 305 meters (~1000 ft) in diameter, Arecibo’s spherical reflector dish was the largest radio telescope in the world at the time – a record it maintained until 2016 with the construction of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in China. In December 2020, Arecibo’s reflector dish collapsed after some of its support cables snapped, leading the National Science Foundation (NSF) to decommission the Observatory. Shortly thereafter, the NSF and the University of Central Florida launched investigations to determine what caused the collapse. After nearly four years, the Committee on Analysis of Causes of Failure and Collapse of the 305-Meter Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory released an official report that details their findings. According to the report, the collapse was due to weakened infrastructure caused by long-term zinc creep-induced failure in the telescope’s cable socke