Name of the Project
Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project.

Location
Africa and Australia.

Project Owner/s
The SKA telescope will be co-hosted by South Africa and Australia, with, later, outstations in other countries. Outstations for the South African core element of the SKA will be in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia. The head office is being hosted by the UK.

Project Description
The SKA will provide a collecting area of one-million square metres, which demands a revolutionary break from traditional radio-telescope design.

The project will use three types of antennas (radio-wave receptors) – dishes, midfrequency aperture arrays and low-frequency aperture arrays – to provide continuous frequency coverage from 70 MHz to 10 GHz. Combining the signals from the antennas will create a telescope with a collecting area equivalent to a dish with an area of about 1 km².

The first phase of the SKA, known as SKA1, will result in the creation of two complementary instruments, one each in South Africa and Australia.

The South African instrument, known as SKA1_Mid, will comprise about 200 dishes and operate in the 350 MHz to 14 GHz frequency range. The Australian instrument, known as SKA1–Low, will comprise more than 100 000 (perhaps as many as 130 000) dipole antennas and will operate in the 50 MHz to 350 MHz frequency range.

SKA1–Mid will include the 64 dishes of the South African precursor to the SKA, the MeerKAT radio telescope array, being built in the Karoo region. Australia’s precursor, the Australian SKA Pathfinder (better known as Askap and already in operation) will serve as surveying instrument for the SKA.

The central regions, in Australia and in South Africa, will contain cores, each 5 km in diameter – one for each antenna type. Fifty per cent of the collecting area will be within the central cores. The aperture array antennas will extend to about 200 km from the core regions. In Africa, the dishes will be positioned at distant stations that are 3 000 km from the core regions.

The construction of the SKA will be phased.

Phase 1 (SKA1) will comprise about 10% of the array and will include dishes and low-frequency aperture arrays.

The Australian SKA Pathfinder and South Africa’s Meerkat precursor dishes will be incorporated in the SKA1. The Murchison Widefield Array, located at the Australia site, is another precursor telescope to the SKA.

Phase 2 (SKA2) will extend the array with midfrequency aperture arrays and further dishes.

All the dishes for SKA2 will be located in Africa. All the low-frequency aperture arrays will be located in Australia and all the midfrequency aperture arrays will be built in Southern Africa.

The phased construction of the telescope will mean that the SKA can start operating before construction is completed.

Potential Job Creation
More than 1 000 engineers and scientists in 20 countries have been involved in designing the SKA over the past five years, with new research programmes and educational initiatives and collaborations being created in various countries to train the next generation of space scientists and engineers.

Capital Expenditure
SKA1 is expected to cost €650-million (about R8.9-billion).

Planned Start /End Date
Construction of the first phase of the SKA is expected to start in 2021.

Latest Developments
The Portfolio Committee on Higher Education, Science and Technology of South Africa’s Parliament has approved the convention that creates the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Organisation. The SKA Organisation is an intergovernmental organisation, established to construct the international SKA radio telescope.

The convention was signed by Australia, China, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, South Africa and the UK, in Rome, Italy, in March. They were Further countries are expected to join in the future.

The convention is now going through the ratification processes in the respective parliaments of the signatory countries. The first country to ratify the convention was the Netherlands, in August.

It comes into force when five of the member countries ratify it. However, this number must include Australia, South Africa and the UK – the three host countries.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
None stated.

On Budget and on Time?
The project is reportedly on course.

Contact Details for Project Information
SKA South Africa, email enquiries@ska.ac.za.