“Saturday, October 29 at 6:14 AM (11:14 AM Belgian time), the ALMA observatory in Chile suffered a cyber attack on its computer systems,” the observatory tweeted.
ALMA said the attack forced the operator to suspend “astronomical observations and its website” while its email services “work in a degraded manner”.
“The attack did not affect the antennas or scientific data,” said ALMA, a joint venture between European, US and Japanese partners, working with Chile.
The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) has 66 antennas located more than 5,000 meters above sea level on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Atacama Desert and employs more than 300 people.
The computer attack has not (yet) been claimed.