A 305-meter radio telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed after sustaining damage earlier this year — sending 900 tons of radio equipment crashing into the dish.

The National Science Foundation announced last week a planned decommissioning of Arecibo Observatory after engineers said repairing the damage safely was impossible.

For nearly 60 years, Arecibo surveyed the sky, searching for alien life, far-away planets and tracking near-Earth asteroids.

We’ll talk with planetary radio astronomer Alessondra Springmann about her connection to the dish and what the end of Arecibo means for the scientific community.

Then, SpaceX is set to launch a shipment of supplies and science experiments to the International Space Station. We’ll talk with the ISS National Lab’s acting chief scientist Michael Roberts about some of the experiments heading to space and what it takes to conduct science from the orbiting lab.