The ALMA telescope (Atacama Large Millimeter Submillimeter Interferometer) is a radio interference meter constructed in the Atacama Desert at an altitude of 5,000 meters in the northern part of the Republic of Chile in South America.
1/4 of this project is contributed by Japan's state-of-the-art technology.
Nicknamed Morita Array is the name of Professor Koichiro Morita who contributed to it.
Unfortunately, professor Morita was killed by a local robbery murderer in front of his house in Chile, just before the completion of the ALMA telescope, and he could not see the completion of the ALMA.
His name was given to the asteroid that was first observed by the international project staff who missed him.
The ALMA telescope is a mechanism that arranges many telescopes in multiple wide areas on the earth and links them to function as one huge telescope.
This made it possible to observe astronomical objects on further scale that was not possible before, and succeeded in photographing black holes for the first time.
Research is also underway to explore organic molecules such as amino acids related to the origin of life, how stars, planets, and galaxies were born and evolved,etc.
The supercomputer for processing signals collected by 16 antennas made in Japan was also developed by Japan.