The Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array

The Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) is an international radio telescope under construction in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. ALMA is situated on a dry site at 5000 m elevation, allowing excellent atmospheric transmission over the instrument wavelength range of 0.3-10 mm. ALMA will consist of two arrays of high-precision antennas. One, of up to 64 12-m-diameter antennas, is reconfigurable in multiple patterns ranging in size from 150 m up to ~ 15 km. A second array is composed of a set of four 12-m and 12 7-m antennas operating in one of two closely packed configurations ~ 50 m in diameter. The instrument will provide both interferometric and total-power astronomical information on atomic, molecular, and ionized gas and dust in the solar system, our galaxy, and the nearby to high-redshift universe. In this paper, we outline the scientific drivers, technical challenges, and planned progress of ALMA.