Name and Location
Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, Africa and Australia.

Client
The international SKA project is run by the UK-based SKA Organisation, which currently comprises ten countries – 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 will comprise about 200 dishes, will operate in the 350 MHz to 14 GHz frequency range and is known as SKA1_Mid. The Australian instrument will comprise more than 100 000 (perhaps as many as 130 000) dipole antennas, will operate in the 50 MHz to 350 MHz frequency range and is called SKA1_Low.

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.

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.

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
SKA, the local organisation responsible for the country's involvement in and contributions to the SKA radio telescope, has been authorised by the Ministers of Finance and Science and Technology, to start buying land for the core site of SKA Phase 1. "These purchases are subject to negotiation," SKA SA director Dr Rob Adam reported to the third SKA African Partner Countries Ministerial Meeting at Muldersdrift, north-west of Johannesburg, on April 15.

"We will certainly be ready for construction to begin in 2018 . . . a construction strategy has been approved by the [international SKA] board," Adam has confirmed.

Currently, the international SKA programme involves ten countries. All member countries will invest in the project, in cash and/or in kind. Adam has pointed out that companies from all ten of these countries will be able to bid for work on the SKA.

SKA SA is also responsible for the country's 64-antenna MeerKAT radio telescope array programme, which will be a major instrument in its own right. So far, 21 MeerKAT dishes have been established. "We're rolling out roughly one a week from now on," he has stated, adding that, "Next year, we'll reach the full 64."

Furthermore, SKA SA is also leading the African Very Long Baseline Interferometry (AVN) initiative to develop radio astronomy in other African countries. The AVN member States are also the SKA African partner countries. They are Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia. The initiative involves converting obsolete large telecommunications dishes in these countries into radio astronomy antennas. As SKA partner countries, they will host outstations for SKA Phase 2.

The first of these conversion projects is taking place in Ghana. This involves the conversion of a 32-m-diameter dish at Kutunse. Adam has affirmed that this conversion will reach a "critical" hand-over milestone at the end of June this year, depending on negotiations with the Ghanaian customs authority. The second conversion will likely be done in Zambia, followed by Kenya and Madagascar.

Human capital development programmes are also under way across the SKA African partner countries. They will aim to develop a strong research base, engineering capacity, sufficient skilled artisans to support the AVN, and to technical skills in the local communities close to the radio telescopes to ensure the sustainability of the instruments in each country. This has last been pioneered in South Africa at Carnarvon, the small town that is the nearest urban area to the MeerKAT/SKA site. Adam has noted that it was better to use locals than to have to bring outside people in.

Another aspect of the AVN and SKA will be large-scale data processing. This has resulted in the Big Data Africa project, which aims to make Africa a leading player in the global big data industry by developing capacity and expertise, Adams has highlighted. "Start by training scientists and engineers on astronomy data processing."

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
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research general and technical enquiries, Tendani Tsedu, tel +27 12 841 3417.
SKA South Africa, tel +27 11 442 2434, fax +27 11 442 2454 or email tcheetham@ska.ac.za.
SKA Organisation chief communication officer William Garnier, tel +44 161 306 9613 or email w.garnier@skatelescope.org.