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Galbiati Group was invited by INAF (National Institute for Astrophysics) on September 30, 2013, to attend the inauguration ceremony of the SRT Radio Telescope (Sardinia Radio Telescope), in the vicinity of “Pranu Sanguni”, about 40 km north of Cagliari, in the municipality of San Basilio.
This is the largest radio telescope in Italy, about 70 meters high and weighing more than 3,000 tons with a satellite dish diameter of 64 meters, one of the most sophisticated tools in the world in terms of technology features and astronomy applications.
The radio telescope at San Basilio, along with the other two parabolic antennas of 32 meters in diameter, installed in Medicina (Bologna) and Noto (Siracusa) were implemented in the 60s and 70s by a U.S. company on a directive of the CNR (National Committee for Research) and now in charge of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), constitutes an integrated system of radio telescopes for astronomical observation and reception of signals from deep space in the field of radio frequencies that are not visible.
Built for the purpose of research in various fields of astrophysics (from studying pulsars to studying galaxies and molecular components of star-forming regions), SRT has great observational skills, able to pick up frequencies up to 100 GHz.
SRT is a modern designed radio telescope, versatile, with variable focal positions, innovative even in terms of the outer structure of the satellite dish, composed of a mosaic of 1000 aluminium panels supported and controlled by servomechanisms able to compensate for the deformations of the metal structure produced by gravity, temperature changes and wind.
Galbiati Group is proud to have participated in the construction of the SRT telescope, through the provision of planetary gears and toothed sectors for the elevation of the sectors that make up the circular rail azimuth and its 4 wheel axles, which depend on the support and the movements of the entire radio telescope.
Using modern machine tools with numerical control (CNC milling and boring machines), Galbiati Group has distinguished itself once again for its excellence, quality and precision: in particular in the construction of the toothed sectors able to obtain a better toothing quality according to ISO-DIN 7 for each sector, such quality is usually obtained with specific machine tools such as milling and grinding with high precision.
Overall, the SRT project, a work costing € 60 million, primarily funded by MIUR, the Italian Space Agency and the Autonomous Region of Sardinia, is a very high technological contribution which, in addition to providing a strong commercial impact on the territory, provides an impetus to the development of science and technology nationally and internationally and will, in the near future, provide answers to fundamental questions regarding physics of our universe, from the closest solar system to the most distant radio sources.
The following is a video of the assembly stages of the telescope.
