ALMA - the highest and largest radio observatory
High in the Andes in northern Chile, one of the worlds most challenging projects is underway. A radio astronomy observatory with no less than 66 parabolic antennas is being built at an altitude of 5.000 metres a truly Herculean task.
The script is online as a PDF file under http://television.esa.int/photos/EbS55263.pdf
A WMV preview clip is online under http://esatv-movies.e-vision.nl/videos/mphi/alma_dv_10-07-07_wmphigh.wmv

ALMA, the highest and largest radio observatory
A-Roll
00:01:40 High in the Andes in northern Chile, one of the worldís most challenging projects is underway. A radio astronomy observatory with no less than 66 parabolic antennas is being built at an altitude of 5.000 metres ñ a truly Herculean task.
00:01:59 First scientific observations are expected in 2009, with the full array completed in 2012. ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimetre Array, will be the largest and highest observatory of its kind in the world.
00:02:17 The panorama around San Pedro resembles a Martian landscape. It is from this oasis in the Atacama desert, that construction firms and engineers set out to work at the two sites of the ALMA project. Not without great logistical and safety issues.
00:02:36 Clip Jörg Eschwey, ALMA site development, European Southern Observatory (ESO) ""About 25% of the people we send up there cannot take the altitude, they get ill and we have to take them back down again. Also the p