Staff members give media a tour of the new 3,200-megapixel LSST camera, the largest camera ever built, at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, April 11, 2024. After two decades of work, The device will soon be packaged and transported to a mountaintop in Chile to help researchers better understand dark matter, dark energy and other mysteries of the universe. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
The world’s largest camera was on its way from its birthplace, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, to the top of a mountain half a hemisphere away, at the foot of the Andes.
Summereverything was on track, until nationwide protests in Chile threatened to derail his safe arrival. But luckily, the Chilean president took matters into his own hands and led the way.
“It was a very high-stakes operation. This is the future of American astronomy,” said Travis Lange, SLAC engineer and camera project manager. “There are literally thousands of people considering using this data.”
In addition to its famous linear accelerator, used to find the smallest particles in the universe, and now its massive camera, SLAC is known for building large, sophisticated machines using X-rays, lasers and electron beams to unravel the enigmas on Earth and in the cosmos.
Most of the monumental journey went smoothly for the $168 million instrument, which will offer never-before-seen views of outer space and enable groundbreaking astronomical research from its perch in the specially built Rubin Observatory atop the Cerro Pachón ridge in Chile.
His slow, pre-dawn journey began May 14 in a shipping container on a flatbed truck that traveled from SLAC to Interstate 280 and then to San Francisco International Airport. Within hours, the container containing the 5 1/2-foot-tall, 10-foot-long, 6,250-pound camera was safely secured to the floor of a chartered 747 cargo plane, along with two additional containers and dozens of crates containing its associated equipment.
The nearly 11-hour flight to Santiago, Chile, also went well, said Lange and fellow SLAC engineer Margaux Lopez, who led the plane’s packing and shipping operation. at the observatory.
But they didn’t anticipate a truckers’ strike blocking highways around Santiago, the nation’s capital, in protests that threatened to put a giant logistical damper on the transportation mission.
Aware of the importance of the camera for science, Chilean Interior Minister Carolina Tohá Morales received a call about the blockade from an official of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, then called President Gabriel Boric, who ordered a police escort so the camera could pass through.
There were a few problems as the convoy of nine camera trucks traveled for more than six hours up a 22-mile gravel road to Cerro Pachón at about 8,900 feet above sea level in the foothills of the Andes, including a loss of traction of the vehicle carrying the camera. container but it arrived safely at noon on May 16.
On Tuesday, Lopez, who had been working on the transportation plan since 2018, said she was “very relieved” and “also proud.” Once she learned of the strike and a separate industrial action involving equipment handlers at the Santiago airport, she created five different scenarios to resolve the issues.
“Even though there were some hiccups, we were able to resolve everything that happened,” Lopez said by video from the observatory in Chile. “Things went mostly as planned, which is pretty impressive.”
Sending the extremely expensive and important Legacy Survey of Space and Time camera – with its 189 fragile light sensors, five delicate filters and an assortment of complex electronics – by road, by air, then by road again, put a heavy weight on Lopez and Lange.
“It’s kind of like sending your kid to college,” Lange said. “It’s wonderful and terrifying at the same time.”
At the Rubin Observatory, the camera will be attached to the end of a huge telescope, probably in October or November, Lange said. Once installed and configured, it will take photos of 20 billion galaxies, which will be assembled into vast panoramas giving astronomers ever-changing views of colliding and exploding stars, asteroids and mysterious phenomena interstellar systems, including dark energy and dark matter.
Given the scientific value of the instrument, SLAC had kept the transport mission secret, refusing to specify when the camera would depart for the San Francisco airport.
“I like to think there are no bad actors who would sabotage something like this, but it’s not hard for us to not announce that this is going to come out,” Lange said earlier.
The camera’s construction required installation with air 1,000 times cleaner than an average indoor space, to prevent dust and other materials from landing on the highly sensitive exterior lens and degrading its quality, or penetrating in the internal workings of the device.
Engineers custom-built a sealed clean room with a 24-foot ceiling, and everyone entering had to don head-to-toe white bunny suits and blue latex gloves, giving daily activities the feel of a crime scene.
Before shipping, the device was wrapped in a giant silver plastic bag and looked “like a burrito,” Lopez said. Because moisture is an enemy of the instrument, the bag contained dozens of bags of moisture-absorbing desiccant, each the size of a small pillow and weighing several pounds – industrial-sized versions of the tiny packages provided with many consumer electronics products.
The camera was bolted to a 4,000-pound yellow steel frame, then raised and lowered into a pristine steel shipping container. Once inside, the frame was equipped with sensors to measure and track impacts to the camera from bumps and shakes – which post-trip data showed was minimal.
The camera’s 189 custom-made silicon sensors, spaced a hair’s breadth apart and costing $150,000 each, were Lange’s main concerns before shipping.
“It doesn’t take a lot of movement to close that distance,” Lange said earlier. “If they touch, they break. That would be really bad.
Previously, to ensure that the transport device could keep the camera safe on its journey to Chile, a dummy version of the device, heavily weighted with black iron gymnastic plates and connected to impact sensors, had been placed on a truck and driven around the country. Bay Area.
“We sent the driver on an eight-hour drive and said, ‘Find all the worst roads you can.’ Hit 101. Hit 880,” Lange said. “We were recording the shocks during this process.”
Then they did a much longer test: by truck to Miami, then by plane to Chile and to the observatory site and back to Menlo Park.
Now the camera waits in its new clean room on the third level of the eight-story observatory. On installation day, the instrument will travel in a giant elevator up five levels to the facility’s dome, and technicians will use 108 large, high-strength bolts to secure it to the tip of the telescope.
Five months of testing will follow. If all goes well, the first light photons will enter the camera in the spring.
The camera and telescope, Lange said, “are going to revolutionize astronomy.”