ALMA Operations Support Facility

31 December, 2009 / Read time: 1 minute

Former North American ALMA Project Director Adrian Russell gives an overview of the ALMA Operations Support Facility, known as the OSF or the "low site." This is where the telescopes are controlled, where staff sleep and eat, and where the telescopes are assembled and hauled up to the observatory site.

The OSF is, in many aspects, the center of activities of the ALMA project. The OSF is the focal point of all antenna Assembly-Integration-Verification (AIV) activities. Antenna assembly is done at the OSF site at three separate areas, one each for the antennas provided by North America (VERTEX), Japan (MELCO), and Europe (AEM Consortium).

Credits: National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)