The costs of the construction phases of the world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), are likely to be capped to ensure that the international programme remains affordable for the participating countries. About 70% of the SKA will be hosted by South Africa, with the rest in Australia.

The international SKA project is run by the UK-based SKA Organisation. The project in South Africa is the responsibility of a separate, local organisation, SKA SA.

“The full SKA costs will have to be revised,” stated SKA South Africa director Dr Bernie Fanaroff on Thursday at an Industry Day for South African companies. He added that it would be more than the original estimate of €1.5-billion. “But how much more, we don’t know.” Nevertheless, he hazarded his own guess. “The total cost is going to exceed €3-billion.”

The SKA is now in its preconstruction phase. This is the first of three phases that will result in the creation, by 2024, of a massive array with a collecting surface equivalent to a square kilometre.

This preconstruction phase will run from this year until 2016, being followed by construction Phase 1 (from 2016 to 2020) and then construction Phase 2 (2020 to 2024). Fanaroff reported that the funding available for the SKA preconstruction phase is likely to exceed the budget allocated. He suggested a possible Phase 1 costs cap of €400-million to €450-million.

“We believe that South African industry has an important role to play in the SKA,” he said. “This is a telescope on an industrial scale,” affirmed SKA SA associate director for science and engineering Professor Justin Jonas. “It has to be done with industry.”

The work required to create the SKA will be divided into work packages, Jonas explained. These would include the dish array, the low frequency aperture array, the central signal processor, the science data processing, the signal data transport and synchronisation and timing, the telescope manager and the power work packages.

Each work package would be addressed by a consortium of scientific institutions and industries, and each consortium would be led by one or two countries. Thus, the dish array consortium will be co-led by South Africa and Australia while the central signal processing consortium will probably be led by Canada. However, all the consortia will be international, and South Africa will be involved in a number of them.

The setting up of these consortia is part of the preconstruction phase. South African companies interested in participating should approach SKA South Africa and register on its supplier database.