The 500M largest satellite dish

500m_Fast Radiotelescope_01

Largest satellite dish Overview of FAST（Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope 500M）

In the year of 2006 and 2012, Antesky participate in the project of 50m 50m Radio Telescope (VHF/UHF-, L-, S/X-, Ku-band)&65m Radio Telescope Antenna(L/S/C/X/Ku/K/Ka/Q band), and we Antesky do the components production, installation,debug and testing.the Chinese government is now establishing the biggest single Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (largest satellite dish) of the world in Guizhou province, which is short in FAST（Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope）. This Radio telescope is with diameter up to 500m, whose parabolic reflector is constructed in the mountains according to the local natural Karst hollow. The FAST project has begun construction from March of 2011, and its first reflector unit has been hoisted and assembled successfully on Aug 2^nd of 2015. The whole project is estimated to complete in September of 2016, which will last for 5.5 years in total.

The 500M largest Satellite Dish Features:

KEVI Zhang, Antesky’s engineer, said that “The radio telescope adopts the same principle with the earth station antenna to receive satellite signals, which gathers the signals to one point through the reflecting and focusing of parabolic reflector. The main reflector of FAST is a Spherical cable-reinforced membrane structure comprised of thousands of tightwires and 4450 pieces of reflector units. Each reflector unit is made up of 100 subunits, which are 445,000 pieces of panels in total and 250 thousand ㎡ of total area (about 30 football fields). Moreover, the cable-net structure of FAST can change automatically with the spherical movement, and drive the 4,450 reflector units operating in the cable net, then form a 300m diameter instantaneous paraboloid in the observing direction by active control.”

Comparison with the similar antennas

Once the FAST established successfully, it will be the biggest single Aperture Telescope in the world. Compared with the Bonn 100m telescope of Germany, named “the biggest machine in the world”, FAST has 10 times higher sensitivity. If the celestial bodies are distributed uniformly in the aerospace, the observed targets of FAST would increase about 30 times. Also compared to the Arecibo 300m telescope of America, FAST has 2.25 times higher sensitivity. What’s more, the operating limitation of Arecibo 20°zenith angle restricts the observation area, especially restricts the networking observation ability. Therefore, we can predict that FAST will be kept as the world class equipment in the future 20-30 years, attract the world class talents at home and abroad as well as the leading scientific research, and become the academic communication center of international astronomy.

Application fo The 500M largest Satellite Dish:

As a basic research platform for multiple subjects, FAST will mainly be applied in the following ways:

FAST will be able to reappear the previous images of universe.
FAST can discover thousands of pulsars in one year, and establish time array of pulsar, and then participate the autonomous navigation and gravitational wave detection of pulsar in the future.
FAST can get the hyperfine structure of celestial body.
FAST can do HD microwave scanning and detect the weak space signals.
FAST can participate extraterrestrial civilization searching.
FAST can extend the communication capacity in deep space to the outer planets of solar system, and improve 100 times of the capacity to receive satellite data.