Colossal vehicles set to help explore the skies
An Alma antenna on a transporter
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Tuesday, 31, Jul 2007 02:25
The rolling out of a huge antenna transporter has marked the next step towards studying the universe at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths.
The transporter is one of two vehicles that will help to make up the Alma (Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array) observatory in Chile.
With 28 tyres, the 'lorry' is ten metres wide, 20 metres long and six metres high and has as much power as two formula one engines.
It will be able to transport a 115-ton antenna from a base camp at 2,900 metres to the 5,000-metre-high observatory.
Once there it can place the antenna on a concrete pad within millimetres of a given position.
When in place the two Alma antennas will be combined to provide astronomical observations equivalent to a single large telescope. Information will be gleaned from the 'cool' universe – the relic radiation of the Big Bang, and the molecular building blocks of the universe.
The images it will capture are expected to be taken with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution and at an accuracy ten times better than the Hubble telescope.
Adrian Russell, the North American project manager for Alma said: "The ability to move antennas to reconfigure the observatory's array is vital to fulfilling Alma's scientific mission.
"The operations plan calls for moving antennas on a regular basis to provide the flexibility that will be such a big part of Alma's scientific value. That's why the transporters are so important and why this is such a significant milestone."