Construction of world’s largest radio telescope complete

Work is now complete on the world’s largest radio telescope that will act as a giant ear to listen for radio waves originating from space.

Situated in China’s Guizhou province, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) was tested for the first time this week as it begins its search for the secrets of the universe and extra terrestrial life.

It will receive radio signals, catalogue pulsars, investigate gravitational waves, dark matter, fast radio bursts and be ready to receive transmissions from alien life forms.

FAST is the brainchild of Professor Nan Rendong, who is the Chief Scientist and Chief Engineer on the project and is part of China’s scientific revolution, which sees it only lag the United States in terms of the research spending and the amount of scientific papers published.

President Xi Jinping said FAST would see China make “major advances and breakthroughs at the frontier of science.”

The dish size is half a kilometre wide, equivalent to 30 football pitches, and is made up 4,450 panels. It is built in a natural depression in an astonishing feat of engineering.

Construction work on the telescope began in March 2011. Planners looked at 400 karst depressions in southwestern China as possible locations to build FAST before deciding on Dawadang.

Construction on the project proved to be extremely challenging with the location of the telescope hours away from the nearest highway and required construction teams to negotiate their way through rough terrain, narrow roads and through mountainous regions.

A 7km road was built connecting the site to the nearest town. The arduous journey restricted the use of heavy equipment meaning that most of the work had to be undertaken manually, much of it done in temperatures exceeding 40°C.

Professor Nan Rendong commented: “All the heavy parts of the structure we had to transport from an industrial area, thousands of miles away, across these terrible winding roads.”

FAST’s size means that is now the world’s largest radio telescope, overtaking the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which some people might remember as the location of the climactic battle between Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond and baddie Sean Bean in the 1995 film Goldeneye.

FAST was modelled on the Arecibo telescope, both being built in karst depressions and utilised steel cable meshes to provide support connected to limestone peaks.

Its larger size means that is has twice the collecting area of the previous record holder.

As a point of reference, Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank in measures 76m across in comparison to the 500m diameter of FAST.

FAST pulls as much as a 300m diameter of the dish into a parabola that will focus cosmic radio waves on receivers. This means that the antenna will be able to tilt and turn despite being on a fixed dish.

Li Di, Deputy Chief Engineer, on the FAST project said: “When it starts to function, you can imagine that there is a 300-meter bowl rotating in a 500-meter pan. The telescope is able to be accustomed to the single rotation of the earth, and can detect accurately and sensitively.”

With construction now complete, efforts can now turn to perfecting the use of the telescope.

Sun Caihong, Deputy Chief Technologist, commented: “The telescope can access the observed target now, and it is able to collect the data for the experts to make further analysis. But we will still do some debugging and testing operations to perfect its function.”

China will now be hoping that the FAST project will help them be the undisputed world scientific leader.

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