Page 27 - EngineerIt June 2021

SPACE SCIENCES

A total of 170 km of buried fibre cables connect the receptors to the KAPB, with the the area of the sky to which the antennas
maximum length between the KAPB and a single antenna being 12 km. are pointing – and beam-forming, which
The fibre cables run inside conduits buried 1 m below the ground for thermal stability. coherently adds the signals from all the
At the KAPB, the signals undergo various stages of digital processing, such as receptors to form a number of narrow,
correlation – which combines all the signals from all the receptors to form an image of high sensitivity beams used for pulsar
science. The science data products are
also archived at the KAPB with a portion
of the science archive data moved off site
via fibre connection and stored in Cape
Town (with possibilities of reprocessing
the data).
Time and frequency reference signals
are distributed, via buried optical fibres,
to every digitiser on every receptor, so
that they are all synchronised to the same
clock. This is important to properly align
the signals from all receptors.
The control and monitoring
system is responsible for monitoring
the health of the telescope and for
controlling it to do what the operators
want it to do. A large number of
internal sensors (more than 150 000)
monitor everything from electronic
component temperatures to weather
conditions and power consumption. n

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