ASKAP Antenna Manufacture Complete

29 March 2012

All 36 of CSIRO's Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) antennas have been manufactured and passed their factory acceptance tests.

ASKAP's antennas have been built and tested in China by their manufacturer, the 54th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (known as CETC54). Once complete, the antenna sections are disassembled, shipped to Australia and reassembled at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) by CETC54 engineers with the assistance of CSIRO's ASKAP team and local contractors.

"The completion of manufacturing of all 36 antennas is a major event for the project. We now have 28 antennas on site at the MRO in various states of construction, several more in transit and the last two are now being prepared for transport from Shijiazhuang, China," says Ant Schinckel, CSIRO's ASKAP Project Director.

In other recent ASKAP project developments:

• Construction and testing of the fourth, fifth and sixth of the six innovative phased array feeds (PAFs, or 'radio cameras') that will make up ASKAP’s initial Boolardy Engineering Test Array (BETA) is progressing
• The inaugural meeting of the ASKAP Commissioning Taskforce was held on 17 March. This expert group is charged with an oversight and advisory role in commissioning BETA and ASKAP. A draft plan for the engineering commissioning for BETA was presented and the broad strategy for the next phase — BETA science verification — was mapped out.
• Infrastructure construction work at the MRO is coming to a close with contractor McConnell Dowell preparing for the final phases of commissioning and testing the new MRO control building, and
• Progress is continuing on the construction of CSIRO’s Murchison Support Facility in Geraldton by contractor EMCO Building.

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