The ALMA antenna procurement
Abstract
Visitors who come to the OSF at regular intervals find a growing population of antennas at various stages of assembly and testing. The long path from the start of the definition of antenna specifications to the start of science operations with the antennas was and still is a formidable endeavor. When completed, ALMA will comprise a 12-meter diameter antennas array, the bilateral interferometer array, of a minimum of fifty antennas and in addition, the ACA (Atacama Compact Array), composed of four 12-meter diameter antennas and twelve 7-meter diameter antennas. Out of the fifty antennas of the bilateral interferometer array, one-half are provided by the North American partners of ALMA, the other half by the European partners. The sixteen antennas that will comprise the ACA are provided by the East Asian Partners of ALMA. Here we review some key points of this challenging process and we provide a brief history and status of the ALMA antennas. Because of the length of the description, we will present this in a series of two articles. In this first part we concentrate mostly on the bilateral antenna procurement. A detailed description of the ACA will be presented in the next newsletter.
- Publication:
-
ALMA Newsletter
- Pub Date:
- October 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009ALMAN...3...17S
- Keywords:
-
- ALMA