One may say that ‘the art of living consists of seeing the wonderful in the ordinary’, as Pearl S. Buck is often famously cited. Shipping can be perceived as ‘ordinary trade’ in this world. Excitingly this often delivers crucial items that support the global economic development and in this case also cargoes that help to expand our knowledge as scientific society.
Today we talk about the BBC Ems, the BBC Arizona, or the BBC Virginia and many more BBC Chartering vessels that have delivered components that progress our understanding about the origins of life or at least the promise of it through cosmic observations. Uncoinci-dental BBC Chartering was selected to deliver shipping capacity for this stellar project: the delivery of currently the most advanced cosmic radio telescope called ‘ALMA
Studying the cool universe
ALMA stands for Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-milli-meter Array, and represents a single research instrument composed of up to 80 high-precision antennas. It is located on the Chajnantor plain of the Chilean Andes in the district of San Pedro de Atacama at 5,000 meters above sea level.
ALMA will be the forefront instrument for studying the cool universe - the relic radiation of the Big Bang, the molecular gas and dust that constitutes the building blocks of stars, planetary systems, galaxies, and life itself.
This material typically resides at temperatures of 3-100° Kelvin, resulting in spectral energy distributions peaking at sub-millimeter to far-infrared wavelengths.
It operates at wavelengths of 0.3 to 9.6 millimeters, above the Earth’s atmosphere which is dry and sight is largely transparent. It will provide astronomers unprecedented
sensitivity and resolution. The 12-m antennas will have reconfigurable baselines ranging from 15m to 16 km.
Resolutions as fine as 0.005’ will be achieved at the highest frequencies, a factor of ten better than the Hubble Space Telescope. ALMA will be a complete astronomical imaging and spectroscopic instrument, providing scientists with capabilities and wavelength coverage that complement those of other research facilities of its era, such as the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA), the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
An international research co-operation
The ALMA project is a partnership between Europe, East Asia and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica in Taiwan and in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc.
The ALMA antennas
The antennas are central to the ALMA project. Their quality and performance define the overall functionality of ALMA. The specifications of each antenna are 2’ absolute pointing over the whole sky, 0.6’ tracking, and a 25 micrometer RMS surface accuracy (RMS expresses a wave front variance as the Root Mean Squared value of the wavefront over the pupil, i.e. the diameter of mirror).
These are very tight specifications for radio-telescopes fully exposed to the harsh weather environment at 5,000 m altitudes. In view of the difficulties in fulfilling these requirements, prototype antennas were supplied by three companies: the AEM Consortium (procured by ESO), Vertex RSI (procured by NRAO for North America) and Mitsubishi Electrical Company (procured by NAOJ, Japan).
Intense testing led to further improvement and eventually the North American partners of the ALMA project, through AUI, signed a contract to supply up to 25 antennas, with options to increase to 32 antennas, with Vertex RSI on July 11, 2005. On December 6, 2005, the ESO Director General signed a contract with the AEM Consortium (composed of Thales Alenia Space, European Industrial Engineering, and MT-Mechatronics) for the supply of 25 ALMA antennas, with options to increase the number of antennas to 32. The four antennas measuring 12 meters in diameter and the twelve antennas measuring 7 meters in diameter are to be provided by Japan. They have been ordered from Mitsubishi Electrical Company.
The ALMA science objectives
ALMA will provide an unprecedented combination of sensitivity, angular resolution, spectral resolution, and imaging fidelity at the shortest radio wavelengths for which the Earth’s atmosphere is transparent. It will provide scientists with an instrument capable of producing detailed images of the formation of galaxies, stars and planets in both continuum and the emission lines of interstellar molecules. It will capture images of stars and planets being formed in gas clouds near the Sun and will observe galaxies in their formative stages at the edge of the Universe, which we see as they were roughly ten billion years ago.
A World Class Observatory in the Desert
The ALMA Array Operations Site (AOS) is a truly unique and unusual place: the Altiplano de Chajnantor, a plateau at an altitude of 5,000 meters in the Atacama Desert in Chile. This location was selected due to many well scientific reasons, particularly dryness and altitude.
Considering these aspects, the ALMA Observatory is unique because of its ambitious scientific goals, the unprecedented technical requirements and the harsh environment at the AOS.
The ALMA Observatory will be operated at two distinct sites, far away from comfortable living conditions of modern civilization. The ALMA Operations Support Facilities (OSF) will be the base camp for the everyday, routine operation of the observatory. It is located at an altitude of about 2,900 meters, which quite high compared to standard living conditions, but still acceptable.
However, the OSF will not only serve as the location for operating the joint ALMA observatory, it is also the assembly, integration, verification, and commissioning station for all the high technology equipment before they are moved to the Array Operations Site (AOS), located at 5,000 meters altitude.
The Operations Support Facilities (OSF) is presently the area where all ALMA Site contractors and their staff are accommodated. Special camps have been erected that can accommodate up to 500 workers. It is the central location for running the observatory and taking care of all maintenance and operations aspects. In the operations phase it is the workplace of the astronomers verifying the quality of the ALMA data and of the teams responsible for maintaining proper functioning of all the telescopes.
Transportation of ALMA antennas
It was early 2009 when the first Antennas of the project were delivered from Aviles, Spain to Antofagasta, Chile onboard the BBC Andino Express Line – European Service. This is a regular liner service that BBC Chartering has developed in 2005. Today this connection serves one of the most exciting cosmic projects in the world.
The antennas were wrapped and dismantled into three components. One radio telescope shipment consists of the radio telescopic base (~50mt), two yokes (~each about 20mt) and a few containers storing other smaller components. In shipping terms, the entire antenna displaces about 100mt and represents a comparably small but very sensitive cargo.
‘It is for this reason why the antenna’s equipment had to be loaded in the mid-ship segment,’ states Christian Buss, Chartering Broker of BBC Chartering Leer, and continues ‘this is an area where cargoes usually encounter least motion forces from the sailing of the ship through wind and water.’ After their four to five week journey to Chile, the components were unloaded and carried to the Operations Support Facility (OSF). Upon their assembly and acceptance testing a special transporter takes them to the high plateau to the observatory’s Array Operation Site (AOS).
The first antennas supplied by Vertex RSI have been delivered to Chile in 2007. The first antenna to be supplied by the AEM Consortium got delivered early 2009, traveling onboard the BBC Sweden. Meanwhile the four Japanese 12meter antennas have also been delivered to the Operations Support Facility (OSF). Just recently the last three of the twelve Japanese 7meter antennas were transported on board the BBC Virginia from Kobe to Mejillones. To date, BBC Chartering has transported a total of twelve antennas from Japan and sixteen antennas from Europe for this project. Two more are planned to be loaded in December 2011, increasing this to 18 in totals for this year. The remaining seven antennas from Europe will follow early 2012.
‘As the output of antennas follows specific production schedules, we and our clients appreciate the availability of a regular connection that helps to deliver these cargoes to their destination in Chile. BBC Chartering could convince with its flexible, yet reliable and practical approach delivering a convenient and valuable service helping us to ship the antennas to Chile,’ says Ulrich Kleckers of Alca Transitario S.A., the Spanish logistics firm charged to arrange the European antenna logistics.
‘We are excited to contribute to this amazing project,’ says Peter Roland, Managing Director at BBC Chartering’s Tokyo branch who worked closely on this assignment with the UK office of logistics firm Schenker. ‘We can appreciate that we were the shipping partner of choice for the Japanese portion of this prestigious project and it has been a true pleasure to work hand in hand with our friends from Schenker UK.’ Traditional shipping meets cosmic endeavor. Surely special – yet another step ‘anchored by excellence’