The remote control system for the ASTE telescope

The Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE) is a project to operate a. 10-m submillimeter telescope at a high altitude site (4,800 in) in the Atacama desert in northern Chile. The key to successful telescope operation under the severe environment of the observing site is to realize a stable remote control system. The remote control system for ASTE consists of a newly developed operating software capable of remote observation and a satellite network facility (56-64 kbps), which connects the telescope site to the outside world including the operation base in San Pedro de Atacama (altitude 2,400 in) or institutes in Japan. The control software was developed based on the existing COSMOS3 system, which has been used for the 45-m telescope acid the Millimeter Array (NMA) of the Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO) in Japan. The telescope operation with N-COSMOS3 in Chile started in April 2002. We have succeeded in the first remote observation from the base in San Pedro de Atacama in July 2002, followed by the first successful remote observation from Japan in October 2003.