Unfortunately, this is not the first setback Arecibo has endured. It faced dire financial trouble in 2008 and again in 2016. Then, like much of Puerto Rico, the observatory suffered significant damage during Hurricane Maria. Things seemed to be turning around in 2018 when a group led by UCF took over operations from the National Science Foundation, and last year, Arecibo got a boost from the $19 million NASA grant.

It’s unclear how long the observatory will be out of commission or how much repairs will cost. 

“We have a team of experts assessing the situation,” Francisco Cordova, director of the observatory, said in a statement. “Our focus is assuring the safety of our staff, protecting the facilities and equipment, and restoring the facility to full operations as soon as possible, so it can continue to assist scientists around the world.”

While Arecibo Observatory, built in the 1960s, is certainly not the newest telescope, nor the most advanced, it is still one of the largest in the world. According to Scientific American, it’s particularly good at finding gravitational waves and pulsars, and it’s been used repeatedly to better understand near-Earth asteroids. The observatory has certainly recovered from setbacks in the past. Hopefully, this time will be no different.

Many proposed anti-asteroid solutions involve knocking them off-course, which carries its own problems — what if you create a fragment that hits Earth regardless? Researchers might have a safer solution. They’ve proposed a system (spotted by Parabolic Arc) that would tether a threatening asteroid to a smaller rock, throwing off the larger body’s center of mass and steering it away from our homeworld. As the method only involves a giant cable, it wouldn’t risk cracking an object into pieces.

The scientists couldn’t test this in real life, of course, so they used a simulated version of Bennu to see how well their idea would work. It’s viable for protecting the planet in a range of conditions, the team said.

Asteroids that are predicted to come within 5 million miles of the Earth are considered a potential threat by NASA. While that seems like a vast distance, gravity could shift an asteroid’s orbit closer and closer to Earth, eventually resulting in an impact.

A proactive approach is certainly preferred for this type of work, and the Earth evidently needs more eyes watching out for such threats. Just last month, an asteroid dubbed a “city killer” took scientists by surprise. Traveling at 15 miles per second, the giant space rock designated as Asteroid 2019 OK missed Earth by just 45,000 miles. To put that into perspective, the moon is about 240,000 miles away.

The Arecibo Observatory will also analyze and categorize NEOs to help inform future space mining and sampling missions. “We can use our system to constrain the size, shape, mass, spin state, composition, binarity, trajectory, and gravitational and surface environments of NEOs and this will help NASA to determine potential targets for future missions,” says Anne Virkki, principal investigator for the observatory’s planetary radar program.

A portion of the $19 million grant will also be used for a STEM education program at the Science, Technology and Research (STAR) Academy in Puerto Rico. 30 high schoolers per semester will learn about the science and research conducted at the observatory across 16 sessions.

The 1,000-foot radio telescope has been in service since the mid-1960s, having served a variety of uses, from determining the rotation period of Mercury to transmitting a bitmap image to hypothetical extraterrestrials 25,000 lightyears away. The facility has occasionally faced financial troubles, but this latest grant will keep the Arecibo Observatory running for the time being.