The last of the 64 foundations for the dishes for South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope array was poured on Tuesday, SKA South Africa (SKA SA) has announced. The 64-dish MeerKAT will be a precursor to the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, which will be jointly hosted by South Africa and Australia.

“The foundations were constructed to stringent specifications to ensure that the antennas will be exceptionally stable,” explained SKA SA GM: infrastructure and site operations Tracy Cheetham. “Even at wind gusts of up to 69 km/h scientists must be able to point the dishes at distant celestial objects in an exact manner and the antennas must be able to survive wind speeds of up to 144 km/h.”

As a consequence, each foundation is composed of eight steel-reinforced concrete piles, which extend from 5 m to 10 m deep, depending on soil conditions, plus a 5.2 m by 5.2 m slab of concrete positioned on top of the piles, to add stability. For each foundation 32 holding down bolts were pre-assembled to form a circular steel cage, known as a bird’s nest, into which the concrete was poured. The construction of the foundations used more than 570 t of steel and nearly 5 000 m³ of concrete. The laying of the foundations took nine months.

“The completion of the foundations and the soon-to-be completed first antenna represent major milestones in the building of the MeerKAT, which will become an integral part of the SKA project,” enthused Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom. “I am very pleased with the progress and the quality of the work that our scientists and engineers are delivering on this challenging assignment and wish them well with the enormous task ahead of meeting the tight schedule in the next two years.”

“We are on the last leg now,” affirmed Cheetham. The Karoo Array Processing Building (KAPB) and the power facility are both receiving their final touches. The KAPB will house all the MeerKAT’s data processing racks and its power and back-up equipment. The building is actually an underground bunker, shielded from radio frequency interference. The fibre-optic cable ducting has been completed, leaving contractor Plessey to just pull through and connect the cable. All MeerKAT infrastructure should be completed by the end of next month.

For the next two months the focus will be on testing that all the infrastructure operates to specification. This will include cold and hot commissioning. “During cold commissioning the power is connected without switching on the equipment,” she elucidated. “During hot commissioning the machines are turned on and tested for a period of time.”

SKA SA is the local organisation responsible for South Africa’s contribution to the global SKA project.