ALMA Telescope Assembly Area

31 December, 2009 / Read time: 1 minute

This video presents aerial images of the buildings that constitute the ALMA Operations Support Facility (OSF). This site is located about 30 kilometers from San Pedro de Atacama, at an altitude of 3000 meters, and provides spaces designed for workers to perform specific tasks, such as the assembly and testing of the antennas that make up the telescope.

Among the images shown are the European antenna assembly buildings of the Alcatel-EIE-MT (AEM) consortium, the East Asian antenna preparation area led by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO), the North American antenna assembly building designed and built by VertexRSI, and the antennas in motion at the Antenna Array Operations Site (AOS) at 5000 meters.

Credits: National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)