How to Move the World's Largest Camera from a California Lab to an Andes Mountaintop

By late next year, if all goes to plan, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will have started its 10-year survey of the solar system, Milky Way and galaxies beyond. Its giant eye on the southern skies is a 3.2-gigapixel camera with the size and weight of a small car. By mass and pixel resolution, it is the largest digital camera on Earth. It will scan the cosmos from atop a mountain called Cerro Pachón in northern Chile. There is just …