The 4m class New Robotic Telescope (NRT) is an optical facility designed to revolutionize the rapid follow-up and classification of variable and transient objects. The project is at the stage where key systems are progressing through their detailed design phases, which presents a major engineering challenge for all project partners to manage design progress of the high-level interfacing systems while still ensuring the delivery of top-level science requirements. The freezing of key system architecture features at the preliminary design review in 2021 has allowed significant progress to be made towards a target of Engineering First Light (EFL) in 2027. The project critical path is currently driven by the optics and the enclosure. Both of these components are novel in design: the NRT will have an 18-segment primary mirror and a large, fully-opening clamshell enclosure. Particular progress has been made regarding enclosure design, software & control, science & operations software and the focal station and associated science support instrumentation. The Critical Design Review for the M3 (fold mirror) was completed Q4 2022 which enabled manufacturing of the first NRT glassware to begin and prototyping of the complete opto-mechanical, hardware and software subsystem for its control to take place. The NRT will join the 2m Liverpool Telescope on La Palma, and as such this existing facility has been exploited to prototype the new science operations user interface and the NRT wavefront sensor.
The New Robotic Telescope (NRT) is an autonomous telescope that can operate multiple instruments at the Cassegrain focal station and the straight-through port. The optical beam is directed to the ports by a fold mirror subsystem in the focal station assembly. The fold mirror is elliptical in shape, manufactured by Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), and polished down to RMS surface deformation of λ/20. An optomechanical analysis is performed to simulate the effect of gravity over the mirror surface deformation and the results have been compared to the interferometry plots to optimize the Ion Beam Figuring (IBF) process to polish the mirror aperture. The mirror assembly is supported by a bipod flexure design to reduce surface deformation under gravity and thermal loads. There are three sets of bipod elements and a central support in the quasi-kinematic support structure. Using wire EDM, the bipods were manufactured precisely as one piece. Following careful preparation and the development of multiple glue jigs to ensure an even glue thickness, the bipods, and central pads are glued to the mirror, and multiple experimental tests have been performed to ensure the glue layer's strength and durability. Other components of the mirror assembly, such as the mirror cell, mirror stand, and moving platform, are being machined out of INVAR, assembled, and mounted on the linear stage and a rotary stage before being installed over the mechanism platform in the A&G box. The design and manufacturing of the mirror assembly, including the gluing process, will be summarised as part of this article.
The New Robotic Telescope (NRT) is a fully autonomous robotic four-meter class telescope located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM) on La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. The autonomous nature requires a robust, fault tolerant, real time Control System. This is achieved by using proven industrial Beckhoff PLCs and an Ethercat data bus for real time operation. The Ethercat data bus is used to link all pieces of PLC hardware together, this drastically cuts down on the number of control cables going through rotators and cable wraps and increases reliability with a ring topology giving cable redundancy. The PLC code is developed using a Unit testing framework which lowers the risk of breaking expensive hardware during code changes and allows extra functionality to be added easily. This is being implemented to allow new hardware to be added easily and old hardware can later be swapped out for newer models, lowering maintenance costs. The PLCs are controlled by a Kubernetes Cluster using the OPC-UA protocol. The telescope functional safety will be tightly integrated with Beckhoff Twinsafe allowing complete telemetry all the way up the software stack.
The forthcoming New Robotic Telescope, a collaboration between the UK and Spain, is poised to become the world’s largest and fastest autonomous observatory, located in La Palma. It is tailored to be a premier 4m class follow-up facility for the imminent wave of time-domain and transient astrophysics. It exemplifies innovation with its use of serverless architectures and a unified DevOps methodology, integrating Docker and Kubernetes to facilitate reliable, scalable, and responsive deployments both on-premises and cloud infrastructure. This model not only aligns with modern web-based principles and distributed deployments but also ensures that astronomers and operations staff have unfettered access to manage their observations, data products and monitoring of the facility in a unified modern interface, setting a new standard for modern astronomical research facilities. Building on the Liverpool Telescope’s autonomous robotic legacy, the New Robotic Telescope merges the GranTeCan Control System’s framework with a novel Robotic Control System, facilitating the transition from human-operated to fully automated observatory functions. We describe the current status of the infrastructure for the New Robotic Telescope software stack, focusing on the current DevOps infrastructure and ongoing development, as well as outlining the future work ahead of the initial construction of the telescope.
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