[asapmembers] SAVE THE DATE: Thurs., July 7th 12 pm ET: ASAP Lecture/Discussion "A Preliminary Plan to Quickly Restore Utility to the Arecibo 305m Telescope"
secretary at areciboscience.org
secretary at areciboscience.org
Tue Jul 5 11:05:47 UTC 2022
Dear Colleagues,
Lecture/Discussion: Thurs., 7th July, 12 noon ET
Title: A Preliminary Plan to Quickly Restore Utility to the Arecibo 305m Telescope
Dr. Dale Ferguson — USAF Spaceforce
(A fuller biography is given below)
Host: Dr. Eliana Nossa, George Mason University.
Zoom Link: To be sent 24-48 hours prior to the event
Abstract:
Since the collapse of the Arecibo 305m telescope platform on Dec. 1, 2020,
there has been much discussion of building a new Arecibo telescope or rebuilding
the facility that was destroyed. In the collapse, the tops of the three platform support
towers were sheared off, and the feed arm fell free from the swinging platform and
destroyed 25% of the dish. Fortunately, the Control Building, with the computers,
spectrometers, masers, atomic clocks, 430 MHz Klystrons, etc., was spared.
By replacing the main dish support cables and resurfacing with coarse mesh,
the main dish can be repaired as a reflector for < HF operation. By replacing the
damaged aluminum panels to make the dish whole again, RF operations at up to
500 MHz can be resumed. In this presentation, we outline the steps that can be
taken to restore HF (High Frequency, 3-30 MHz) ionospheric heating, 430 MHz
ionospheric incoherent scattering radar, passive radio observations of satellite
arcing and pulsars, and to extend the field of view to 47 degrees from the zenith.
This would restore and improve much of the utility of the Arecibo dish. Part of this
plan involves supporting, positioning and pointing novel point feeds from lightweight
football-camera-like cables, strung from the rebuilt tower tops. It is believed that
the dish may thus become broadly useful long before replacement facilities can be
engineered and constructed.
This event is a further in the series of ASAP “lunchtime” talks/discussions exploring
issues and proposals pertinent to Arecibo’s future. Recordings of the earlier talks can
be found on the areciboscience.org <http://areciboscience.org/> website.
Please reserve the date, and look for the zoom link to be sent 24-48 hours prior
to the event.
Best regards and wishes,
ASAP Secretary
Dale C. Ferguson received the Ph.D. degree from The University of Arizona, Tucson, in 1974.
He is currently the Lead for Spacecraft Charging Science and Technology with the Space Vehicles
Division, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, NM.
From 1978 TO 1981 Dale was a pulsar staff member at Arecibo. Since 1982, he has been
addressing spacecraft charging problems. In 2018-2019, he spent six months in the Arecibo
Observatory developing and deploying an instrument to measure spacecraft charging known
as the AFRL DAGGER Project. The broadband 327 MHz "Point Feed" was located at the focal
surface of the Arecibo dish.
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