The feed cabin of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) is movable due to its connected wire ropes. Recently, the work of replacing these wire ropes commenced.
Located in a karst depression in Pingtang County, Guizhou province, FAST, acclaimed as the “China Sky Eye”, is the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope, whose feed cabin is as heavy as 30 metric tons. The feed cabin is towed by six special wire ropes, each longer than 600 meters. At an altitude of 140 meters, these wire ropes can pull the feed cabin to any position within a range of 206 meters in real time and with high precision.
The wire ropes have to frequently bend and carry pulse loads, and the work circumstances are complicated. During the construction of FAST, there had been no domestically produced wire ropes that could meet the standards, so a number of qualified ones were imported.
To make FAST more independent and controllable, Ansteel Group Corporation submitted an application in 2022, and in the next year, it was assigned to develop high-service-life wire ropes specially for China’s crucial scientific devices.
After more than 100 experiments, the research team finally made ZY80-4 steel the material for FAST’s wire ropes.
The replacement is expected to be finished in late June.
(Executive editor: Zuo Shihan)
