The Advanced Photon Source (APS) upgrade project is in full swing. When it’s complete, the entire electron storage ring at the heart of the facility will be replaced with a state-of-the-art machine. The new storage ring will be made up of 1,321 powerful electromagnets assembled into 200 modules, each weighing more than 20 tons.

In the video below, you can watch the journey of one of these modules. They are assembled in a warehouse a mile outside of Argonne National Laboratory and, one by one, carefully transported to the APS and installed. Building and installing these modules requires the effort of dozens of people from all corners of the laboratory.

The result will be a new facility with X-ray beams that are up to 500 times brighter, leading to new avenues of discovery.