Chile's ALMA telescope recovers from cyberattack; resumes astronomical observations after 48 days

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory has restarted observations of the sky, forty-eight days after suspending observations due to a cyberattack, which affected various critical operational servers and computers.

Located at 5000 meters above sea level in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the observatory suffered a cyberattack on its computer systems on October 29, following which its astronomical observations and the public website were suspended.

"The challenge was to securely restore all the communication and computer systems as quickly as possible. We established an aggressive plan that required coordination with the ALMA partnership worldwide. Thanks to the active engagement of everyone in the collaboration, especially the Computing, Engineering, and Science Operations staff, and the cybersecurity experts from ESO, NAOJ, and NRAO, we managed to be observing as planned," said Jorge Ibsen, Head of the ALMA Computing Department.

According to an official release, in the coming weeks, the focus will be on recovering testing infrastructure and systems like the ALMA website and other services, which will allow the recovery of all the functionalities existing before the cyberattack.

📡Upadate: ALMA Successfully Restarted Observations. 48 days after suspending observations due to a cyberattack, ALMA is observing the sky again. The computing staff has worked diligently to rebuild the affected observatory's computer system servers https://t.co/UkZYVSEhfK https://t.co/8wcssyXUQB pic.twitter.com/Qa817AWA0l

— ALMA Observatory📡 (@almaobs) December 19, 2022

Composed of 66 high-precision antennas, ALMA is the most powerful telescope for observing the cool Universe - molecular gas and dust. The telescope is able to probe the cosmos at millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, with a vision up to ten times sharper than the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and complementing images made using the VLT Interferometer.

The ALMA observatory is operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), together with its international partners.