Giant Magellan Telescope

“Working on this global, collaborative project is quite simply a unique experience,” says Andres Navarro, WSP project manager for the billion-dollar endeavor. “We were chosen to be part of an initiative that will mark a generation of engineers, astronomers and other scientists.” The Giant Magellan Telescope is being developed by a consortium of universities and institutions from the US, South Korea, Brazil and Australia. The WSP team is well spread out too, based in California, Denver and Santiago as well as the Chilean construction site itself. WSP is responsible for many roles including construction management, technical inspection, engineering and constructability reviews, and health, safety and environment support services.

When it is operational in the late 2020s, the Giant Magellan Telescope will be one of the largest ever engineered.  Its seven 8.4m mirrors will form a single optical surface 24.5m in diameter, each one polished to within a wavelength of light — approximately one-millionth of an inch. With a total collecting area of 368m², it will be able to gather faint light from the farthest reaches of the known universe.

The telescope will be housed in a rotating steel building 60m in diameter and 65m high, weighing in at about 4,200 tonnes. The building effectively operates like a stage for the giant mirrors, capable of disappearing during nightly observations and rotating 360 degrees in nearly three minutes. “This transforms it into a mobile mechanism requiring a very high level of precision in its manufacturing and assembly, which means the construction process is extremely demanding,” says Navarro. “The quality requirements for this project are one-of-a-kind.” As Chile is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world, the telescope pier required a seismic isolation system, and particular attention had to be paid to the specification of the concrete. Flexibility in construction will be vital, said Navarro, especially since the technology for the telescope is still under development. 

The location of this project is as unique as its construction. The Atacama Desert, 630km north of Santiago, is one of the highest and driest locations on Earth, making it an ideal astronomical site. The Giant Magellan Telescope is being constructed on Las Campanas Peak, which has an altitude of over 2,550m, and offers clear viewing conditions through the Earth’s atmosphere for more than 300 nights a year.

The telescope’s remote desert promontory has presented many challenges to Navarro and his team – not least coordinating the removal of 13,000 metric tonnes of rock from the site. Navarro acts as the client’s on-site representative and is also responsible for managing the various contractors and verifying compliance with safety and quality standards. Advanced technology has been instrumental to the day-to-day site work, he says. “We have implemented a management information system based on ProjectSolve SharePoint, which stores all the project information and is used continuously by our client. Other technologies, such as drones and time-lapse cameras, have also been used regularly.”

One of the revolutionary scientific instruments on the Giant Magellan Telescope, called the Large Earth Finder, has been optimized to detect the presence of Earth-like exoplanets orbiting Sun-like stars deep in the universe. Once located, the instrument will analyse the chemical composition of their atmospheres for the first time in history. If there is life out there, we may find out sooner than you think. As the team at the Giant Magellan Telescope likes to say: “The Universe Awaits.”