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ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is an array of short-wavelength radio telescopes whose combined power will enable astronomers to observe the cool Universe – the molecular gas and dust that constitute the building blocks of stars, planetary systems, galaxies, and of life itself. It will operate at wavelengths of 0.3 to 9.6 mm. At these wavelengths, a high, dry site is needed for the telescope to be able to see through the Earth’s atmosphere. This is why ALMA is being built on the 5000 m high plateau of Chajnantor in the Atacama region of Chile. The 12-meter antennas will have reconfigurable baselines ranging from 15 m to 16 km. Resolutions as fine as 0.005 arcseconds will be achieved at the shortest wavelengths – a factor of ten better than the Hubble Space Telescope. The observatory is being assembled by a global partnership between East Asia, Europe and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile.
Airborne is selected to manufacture and deliver the composite structures for 25 telescopes to Vertex Antennentechnik from Duisburg, Germany, who supply to the North American part of the project. Our scope entails the large back-up structure of the reflector dish including the center hub, the quadrapod legs and the head part that contains the secondary mirror. The structures are optimised for stiffness and close-to-zero coefficient of thermal expansion to maintain the high accuracy during operation.
The main challenge in this project, besides the high accuracy and quality requirements, was the industrialisation of production. Such a large project represents a big investment in infrastructure and is complex with so many partners involved; any delay of these essential components would have a big impact on the project. Each of the 25 antennas consist of 24 segments, which results in 600 large composite structures of 6 meter length and close to 300 kg of weight each. This requires an industrial production approach, and that's what we did: a series production line has been set up, that has work stations with dedicated production teams for each manufacturing step, a work planning optimised for production flow and strict inspection protocols throughout the whole production chain to avoid any delays. All segments are fully interchangeable so that we can set a segment aside for extra inspection or repair if needed, without disturbing the rest of the flow. We have produced at a speed of 1 antenna per 5 weeks, which equals to 1 segment per day. We can easily go faster, but current production speed has been reduced to avoid being ahead of schedule.
One of the reasons Vertex has selected us, was the fact that we already produced the South Pole Telescope for them. This project was only one telescope but with a very tight timeslot: the telescope had to be installed in the winter of 2006/2007, summer time in Antartica, because the scientific base cannot be reached outside this time frame. We succeeded in this challenge and proved that we are a reliable capable partner that values open communication about any potential issue, to overcome these together with our client. Currently we are expanding our cooperation with Vertex on future telescope projects such as CCAT and SKA.
For more information, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Line of Business Manager Antennas.
Useful links about the ALMA project are:
http://www.almaobservatory.org/