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

Location
Africa and Australia.

Client
The international SKA project is run by the UK-based SKA Organisation, which currently comprises Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and the UK. India is an associate member and is expected to become a full member shortly.

The SKA Organisation formalises relationships between the international partners and centralises the leadership project.

The project in South Africa is the responsibility of a separate, local organisation, SKA SA.

Project Description
The SKA will provide one-million square metres of collecting area, 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
Not stated.

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

Duration
The first elements of SKA1 should be deployed in 2016 and construction of SKA1 should start in 2018 and be completed in 2023.

Latest Developments
The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) announced on August 17 that the SKA telescope manager (TM) critical design review (CDR) has been completed.

The SKA TM CDR was undertaken by a consortium of nine institutions in seven countries, with SARAO making a significant contribution. Within the consortium, SARAO led the TM system engineering team and also participated in the management work package.

The SKA TM consortium (formed in 2013) was one of 12 engineering consortiums, involving 500 engineers in 20 countries working on different aspects of the SKA. Nine consortiums were involved in critical components for the telescope and three in developing advanced instrumentation for it. The TM consortium was the first of all the consortia to pass the very thorough CDR.

With the successful achievement of the CDR, the TM consortium has formally ceased to exist. However, SARAO and the other institutions, which made up the consortium, will continue to work with the SKO organisation on the system design and the construction proposal for the SKA. Their expertise will be necessary to ensure that the system design works together with the other elements of the telescope.

The other countries that participated in the TM consortium were Australia, Canada, India, Italy, Portugal and the UK. The consortium was chaired by the Dean of India’s Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, professor Yashwant Gupta.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
South Africa: Neotel/Broadband Infraco joint venture, or JV (bandwidth network); Eskom (electricity); Telkom (telecommunications); and Nokia Siemens Networks, Intel, Seacom, Dimension Data, Microsoft and IBM (connectivity support).

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

Contact Details for Project Information
SKA South Africa head communication and stakeholder relations Lorenzo Raynard, cell +27 71 454 0658 or email lraynard@ska.ac.za.