The second Unit Telescope (UT) of the MRO Interferometer was delivered to the Observatory on January 13, 2023. Transporting such a large package up the narrow dirt road was no small feat!
Most of the twists and turns in the road are so tight that the large truck carrying our second telescope could barely make the turns.
This made the trip up to the Observatory a long a laborious process.
We started up the mountain around 9 AM with the expectation that it would take two or three hours to complete the trip. That turned out to be a vast underestimate.
It was nearly 7 PM when the telescope finally reached the Observatory. But the job wasn’t over yet. The telescope needed to be unloaded from the truck and placed in our maintenance facility.
By 8 PM the telescope was safely stored in our maintenance facility. The unpacking of the telescope would not occur for another month.
While it ended up being a much longer day than anyone anticipated, we were treated to a beautiful sunset overlooking the array.
