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

Location
South Africa’s Karoo region and Western Australia’s Murchison Shire have been chosen as co-hosting locations.

South Africa’s Karoo will host the core of the high- and mid-frequency dishes, ultimately extending over the African continent. Australia’s Murchison Shire will host the low-frequency antennas.

Project Owner/s
SKA Observatory (SKAO), comprising Australia, China, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa and the UK, with others expected to join in due course.

Nine countries are currently observers in the SKAO Council, including those that took part in the design phase of the SKA telescopes (Canada, France, Germany, India, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). Japan and South Korea have recently joined.

Project Description
The SKA will provide a collecting area of one-million square metres. This will make the SKA the biggest radio telescope array ever built.

The project will use three types of antennas (radio-wave receptors) – dishes, mid-frequency 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 project will comprise two radio telescope arrays, currently designated SKA-Mid and SKA-Low.

The South African instrument, known as SKA–Mid, will comprise 197 dishes and operate in the 350 MHz to 14 GHz frequency range. The Australian instrument, known as SKA–Low, will comprise 131 072 dipole antennas and will operate in the 50 MHz to 350 MHz frequency range.

SKA–Mid will include the 64 dishes of the South African precursor to the SKA, the MeerKAT radio telescope array. Australia’s precursor, the Australian SKA Pathfinder (better known as Askap) 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, which means that the SKA can start operating before construction is completed.

Potential Job Creation
Five-hundred engineers from 100 institutions across 20 countries are involved in the design of the SKA telescopes.

More than 1 000 scientists from 40 countries are involved in the development of the science case for the SKA telescopes.

Capital Expenditure
The overall design commitment for funding is €2-billion, under 2021 economic conditions. With every passing year, this number increases by the inflation rate.

Planned Start/End Date
The entire array is expected to start early operations by July 2028.

Latest Developments
The SKAO has already awarded 46 major contracts valued at €474-million.

Work on the site of the SKA-Mid element of the instrument, which is hosted by South Africa, started on December 5. Off-site construction work started in July 2021.

Currently, and for months to come, the work at the SKA-Mid site will comprise civil engineering operations – the creation of the infrastructure required by the instrument. The SKA-Mid will be co-located with, and absorb, South Africa’s own 64-dish MeerKAT radio telescope array.

SKA-Mid will include 197 dishes comprising 133 new dishes plus the 64 existing MeerKAT dishes. The first dish of the new SKA dishes is expected to be built and fully equipped, but not yet tested and commissioned, during the third quarter of 2023. The dish has been ordered from a Chinese contractor. The first batch of the SKA dishes will be built in China, which is a member of the SKAO.

“By the end of 2024, we’ll have four dishes completed, with feeds installed and being used for testing – a micro-SKA,” SKAO deputy director-general and head of programmes Dr Joe McMullin has said.

In Australia, which will host SKA-Low, the SKAO now has access to the chosen site, consequently allowing for site surveys, besides other activities. However, it cannot yet start the civil engineering works, as final regulatory approvals are still pending. They are expected to be issued by the start of February, and work will start as soon as they are released.

McMullin is not certain that the SKAO will receive all the funding it requires, but has said that the organisation is hopeful.

“We do have enough front-loaded funding for our work . . . to 2025, especially the engineering design, development and qualification of the system in the field, and developing and establishing logistics support . . . From 2025, we’ll need annual funding inflows, but, hopefully, by then, the international situation will allow for this further funding.”

The SKA project is on course and on schedule.

Key Contracts, Suppliers and Consultants
About 70 contracts will be placed by the SKAO within its member States, with competitive bidding taking place in the countries.

Contracts awarded thus far include: Astron – Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, CGI Netherlands, TriOpSys, S[&]T – Science and Technology Corporation, Vivo Technical, Interaction Design Solutions, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Guangzhou University, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Fourier Space, Observatory Sciences, CGI IT UK, The Numerical Algorithms Group, Persistent Systems, Covnetics, The National Institute for Astrophysics, ALTAR Innovation, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, Critical Software (software development); Zutari (MID infra professional services); SARAO (professional services); AVNET Silica (SPS FPGAs); and Sanitas EG (SPS iTPM & Subracks).

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