In the right place, at the right time – while inspecting structural cable integrity at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the drone captured the collapse of this majestic scientific structure. UAV inspections became the default go-to solution for almost every industry that requires visual inspection as a part of maintenance procedures. 

The Arecibo observatory serves as a perfect use case of UAV inspection: the structure covers the area of 48 hectares, includes towers 100+ meters in height and kilometers of supporting steel cables – an imposing task for manual human inspection.