Ukraine Destroys Legendary Soviet-Era Telescope Once Used to Phone Aliens

Ukrainian defense forces destroyed a giant radio telescope in Crimea, a powerful planetary transmitter once used to support deep space missions and METI—the attempt to message extraterrestrial civilizations.

Ukraine destroyed Yevpatoria RT-70 in a drone attack to prevent Russia from using it for military communication purposes, Space.com reported. Russian defense forces reportedly carried out recent upgrades to the telescope to support attacks on Ukrainian territory, but the 230-foot (70-meter) antenna dish was built by the Soviet Union to study Venus and Mars and communicate with deep space probes.

У Криму “Примари” ГУР знищили російський радіотелескоп РФ РТ-70 pic.twitter.com/XG0w2hMGiJ

— Українська правда ✌️ (@ukrpravda_news) August 31, 2025

Phone home

The RT-70 was one of the largest radio telescopes in the world. Built in the 1970s, the telescope was capable of delivering and receiving signals for space experiments, including those conducted by SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Evidence).

The telescope was used to send several extraterrestrial messages. Between 1999 and 2003, the RT-70 was used to send two sets of interstellar messages to nearby stars as part of the Cosmic Call experiment. In 2001, a group of Russian teenagers used the telescope to send the Teen Age Message signal, a series of interstellar radio transmissions directed toward six Sun-like stars. In 2008, RT-70 was used to transmit a high-powered message to Gliese 581c, a super-Earth exoplanet. The message, aptly titled “A Message from Earth,” contained 501 images, text, and songs selected by the public through a competition.

Aside from attempting to contact extraterrestrial intelligence, RT-70 was also used to support several Soviet-era space missions like Venera, Vega, and Phobos to explore Venus and Mars. It was also used as part of the European Space Agency’s Mars Express and Rosetta missions.

The radio telescope has been under Russian control since its annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Russia reportedly used the telescope to improve the accuracy of its GLONASS satellite navigation system, which is similar to GPS, according to Space.com.

The annexed Crimean peninsula is home to key observational facilities, including the Shajn Mirror Telescope, the largest optical instrument in Ukraine, and the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, resulted in major loss for Ukrainian research facilities, according to a recent report in Nature Astronomy. Astronomical observatories have sustained heavy damage, and much equipment has been destroyed, the report stated. A 2024 UNESCO report estimated that $1.26 billion is needed to restore public research infrastructure in Ukraine.