Rendering of the Giant Magellan Telescope. Image credit: IDOM / Giant Magellan Telescope, GMTO Corporation.
The University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with the Giant Magellan Telescope and IDOM, announced today that the telescope’s enclosure has passed its final design review and is ready for construction in Chile. This milestone marks significant progress for the project, which is now 40% complete and expected to be operational by the early 2030s.
“A team of ten international subject matter experts validated two years of design work by IDOM and the Giant Magellan Telescope. The final design of the enclosure is unique and an important feat of technical management, design, and engineering. We are very grateful for the committee’s professional assessment as we proceed towards construction,” said Bruce Bigelow, site infrastructure, enclosure, and facilities manager for the Giant Magellan Telescope. “We’re also incredibly excited to be moving towards the procurement stage, where we will begin soliciting proposals to begin construction.”
Once completed, the 213-foot-tall enclosure will be one of the largest mechanized buildings ever constructed. Weighing over 5,000 metric tons, it will complete a full rotation in four minutes and feature 46-meter-tall shutter doors to reveal the 83-foot telescope for unobstructed scientific observations. The smart building is designed to control the telescope’s operating environment, protecting seven of the world’s largest mirrors as they track celestial objects across the sky more than a billion light years away.
“The Giant Magellan Telescope is truly a triumph on all levels. From the international collaboration behind its funding and design, to the development of its cutting-edge components, to the ground-breaking science it will enable,” said Taft Armandroff, director of UT Austin’s McDonald Observatory, a founding partner of the telescope. “We are delighted that this modern marvel is one step closer to completion.”
IDOM, which began developing the enclosure design over two years ago, continues to make significant contributions to astronomical facilities with this project. The Giant Magellan Telescope is being built by an American-led international consortium of 14 universities and research institutions, stimulating America’s economy with construction, testing, and design work across 36 states.
“We formed a strong and productive partnership with IDOM as the enclosure designer. Their well-known architectural accomplishments combined with their engineering expertise in large and complex movable structures have been critical to the design of this unique structure,” said Giant Magellan Project Manager William Burgett. “The dedication and attention to detail that the IDOM team has demonstrated has been instrumental on our way to becoming one of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world.”
Tom Lorentz, IDOM North American President, added, “Our team approached the challenge of the Giant Magellan Telescope enclosure knowing that this structure would be responsible for enabling some of the most important scientific discoveries of our lifetimes. We are proud to have delivered a successful design and look forward to the Giant Magellan Telescope’s success.”
Construction of the telescope components is advancing rapidly. The seventh and final primary mirror is being fabricated in Arizona, while the 128-foot-tall mount structure is under construction in Illinois. Significant progress has also been made on the telescope’s first adaptive secondary mirror and a suite of high-resolution imagers and spectrographs across Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and Texas.
These optical technologies will enable the Giant Magellan to achieve a tenfold increase in resolution compared to the Hubble Space Telescope and deliver up to 200 times the power of today’s best telescopes. The breakthrough technologies will offer unparalleled insights into the evolution of the universe, the origins of chemical elements, and the discovery of life on distant exoplanets.
With the enclosure design milestone complete, the Giant Magellan Telescope is preparing for a global search for a firm to construct the enclosure, leaving a lasting impact on the future of astronomy.
