Chinese technicians are assembling a massive reflector on what will be the world's largest and most sophisticated radio telescope deep in the country's southwest mountainous area.
The ambitious astronautics project, named Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope ("FAST") owing to its 500-meter diameter, will be three times more sensitive than the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which is currently the largest of its kind.
The Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry, a leading contractor for FAST, schedules to begin assembling the dish – which has a size of 30 football fields combined – on Sunday. But ahead of the assembly process, workers had already gathered at the construction site in Guizhou Province on Saturday to conduct a final stress test.
"A key factor is the reliability of the whole thing during the process: the tower crane, the conveyor system, and the cables will be operating together and we must see to it that no workpiece breaks away in mid-air," said Huang Wanping, executive director of the unit in charge of the reflector's assembly.
"Pinpoint accuracy is required when we need to convey the workpieces to a specified location," Huang added.
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