World's largest radio telescope gets help from smart maintenance robots.

Chinese authorities announced recently that a handful of "smart" robots have been inspected and approved for use in the upkeep of China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) — currently the largest single-dish radio telescope in the world. The new robots are ready for deployment, the officials said.

The primary role of these robots will be assessing the cables and pulleys that support FAST's feed cabin (the suspended structure that collects radio data collected by the dish); automating the maintenance of laser targets and actuators on the reflector; facilitating the assembly and disassembly of feed receivers; monitoring radio interference; and carrying out all-weather measurements of the 30-ton feed cabin.

With the feed cabin tethered 460 feet (140 meters) above the dish structure underneath, it is naturally a challenge to maintain, and with the dish's 0.3-mile (0.5 kilometers) diameter, maintaining the cables holding up the feed cabin is just as arduous. 

According to interviews with the robots' engineers by China's state-run Xinhua news agency, one of the most important jobs of the new robots will be the replacement of special sensors in the dish that help relay radio signals to the feed cabin overhead. These are embedded in the aluminum reflectors that make up the dish, and which can be damaged by human maintenance workers crawling over them to get to the parts that need replacing.

Maintaining these and other components of the telescope means there are long stretches during which data isn’t being collected, and demand for the telescope has been high ever since China opened up FAST to international researchers in 2020.

Jiang Peng, FAST's head engineer, said that introducing these smart robots would enhance the operational safety of the telescope and extend its observational time, thereby boosting its efficiency. This in turn is expected to encourage the production of more scientific data.

Source: www.space.com

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