How do you move a $20 million mirror?
Very slowly and carefully.
The mirror for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope moved eight miles to temporary storage at Tucson International Airport Tuesday morning — a prelude to its journey to an Andean mountaintop in Chile.
There it will take the deepest, widest and fastest survey of the cosmos ever conducted.
Its all-sky survey is expected to aid in the search for the mysterious forces of dark energy and dark matter, uncover new exoplanets and reveal new mysteries.
Insurance for the three-hour move, accomplished before dawn Tuesday, cost $25,000. The mirror is one-of-a-kind and pretty much irreplaceable.
Precision Heavy Haul of Phoenix carried the 30-feet wide, 14-feet tall metal crate on a specially designed heavy haul bed too big to travel the roads in daylight.
