FILE: Pingtang County, Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, southwest China - Date Unknown
1. Various of Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST)

Pingtang County, Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, southwest China - June 28, 2016
2. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Yue Youling, associate researcher, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences:
"The telescope's construction is basically finished, and then we will enter the subsequent phase of debugging. The debugging phase is a transitory stage between its construction and official operation."

FILE: Pingtang County, Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, southwest China - Date Unknown
++SHOT OVERLAYING SOUNDBITE++
3. Various of FAST
++SHOT OVERLAYING SOUNDBITE++

Pingtang County, Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, southwest China - June 28, 2016
4. Various of database center
5. Various of computers operating
6. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Yue Youling, associate researcher, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences:
"Its data processing ability is equal to that of 50 to 100 home computers. Its storage capacity is 1.6 petabytes (PB), about 1,000 times the storage capacity of a home computer."
7. Various of machines operating
8. Database center
9. Workers working in control center

FILE: Pingtang County, Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, southwest China - Date Unknown
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10. Various of FAST

The world's largest single-dish radio telescope, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), will soon enter its debugging phase in southwest China's Guizhou Province, with its construction almost complete and subsidiary facilities following suit.

The observatory consists of a total of 4,450 triangular panels, out of which 4,443 have been installed, with the remaining seven panels to be installed soon.

"The telescope's construction is basically finished, and then we will enter the subsequent phase of debugging. The debugging phase is a transitory stage between its construction and official operation," said Yue Youling, associate researcher of National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The subsidiary facilities for the telescope including two database centers and a temporary control center have also been set up recently.

The database centers will compute and store the data collected by the giant telescope.

"Its data processing ability is equal to that of 50 to 100 home computers. Its storage capacity is 1.6 petabytes (PB), about 1,000 times the storage capacity of a home computer," said Yue.

Experts say the two database centers' storage capacity is enough to store the data collected by the telescope for one year.