Artist rendering of the LSST site
20 June 2014—Aerospace systems manufacturer Ball Aerospace & Technologies (Boulder, Colo., U.S.A.) announced yesterday that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has selected the company to build the “optics and support structure” for the high-resolution camera to be installed on the forthcoming Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) in Chile.
The LSST telescope, scheduled to begin construction in northern Chile July 1, is a ten-year joint development effort of the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. Once completed atop the summit of Cerro Pachon mountain at 8,800 feet, the LSST will collect data related to dark matter, dark energy, Earth-crossing asteroids and Milky Way formation.
Ball is contracted along with Arizona Optical Systems (AOS) to build the Lens Assembly, which consists of two large refractive lenses and their mounting structure. Ball previously teamed with AOS to build the Universal Collimator Assembly, a ground-based optical testing facility. Ball and AOS did not specify the amount of the contract.