| Description: | The job of the Initial Test Station (ITS) is over. It has played a vital role in the development of LOFAR: Testing of hardware, development of software, building our intuition for judging phased-array data. It also produced some spectacular all-sky images, which have had quite an impact around the world.
As the picture shows, the temporary character of the antennas already became clear during the storms of this spring which they couln’t withstand. The EMC-“closed” container and the astronomical data acquisition system inside will get its next lease of life in Westerbork, where it will serve the “Apertif/Digestif” project. The antennas won’t get a next life and will be removed. The data acquisition systems of the non-astronomical applications (LOFAR-geo, LOFAR-infrasound and LOFAR-agro) will be moved to an outdoor cabinet on the ITS field, where it will be part of the future LOFAR core station 23.
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