At the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex we’re constructing new 34-metre wide antennas and we’ve reached a big milestone with one of them – Deep Space Station 35. Tomorrow, Friday 10th May, at around 7 am (subject to change) we should be lifting Deep Space Station 35’s reflector (dish) onto its pedestal.
To make it easier to build these antennas, we build the antenna base, dish and subreflector separately and then link them together. To do this, we need to lift antenna sections using a 600 tonne crane (it has required over 40 trucks worth of parts to build the crane) and very delicately place them together. The lift of the reflector is likely to take around 45 minutes to an hour and you can watch live on our webcams (webcam 1, webcam 2, and webcam 4) and keep up with the action on our twitter feed at @canberraDSN.
Tune in at 7 am to see all the action…
Deep Space Station 35 with its crane, waiting for a lift.
Deep Space Station 35 on Thursday, 9 May 2013, from webcam 4.
9th May 2013 at 5:31 pm
Reblogged this on News @ CSIRO and commented:
It’s big engineering at its best. Make sure you catch the ‘dish lift’ live stream over breakfast tomorrow morning.