Powerful New Hardware Approved for ALMA

Published: 19 Jan 2018
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The development of a new spectrometer for the Morita Array, which forms part of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), has been approved by the ALMA Board. Developed by Japan, the Morita Array is composed of twelve 7-metre antennas and four 12-metre antennas.

The new GPU-based spectrometer is being developed by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). It will be dedicated to the four 12-metre antennas under the ALMA Future Development Program, which aims to maintain ALMA’s capacity to produce remarkable scientific results.KASI is responsible for the design, development, verification and shipping, while NAOJ assumes the development and system design of software and hardware, and the integration of the spectrometer into the rest of the ALMA system. It is planned to deliver the new spectrometer to ALMA in 2020.

More information can be found in the ESO Science Announcement.