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 midfrequency 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), and other more recent joiners Japan and South Korea.

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, 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 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
Construction of SKA-Mid and SKA-Low will cost €1.3-billion (in 2020 euros) while operational costs for the first ten years will be €700-million (in 2021 euros).

Planned Start/End Date
Construction is expected to start in 2021 and be completed in 2029.

Latest Developments
South Africa’s National Research Foundation and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory have jointly announced that the seven member countries of SKAO have authorised the start of construction of the two arrays that will form the observatory.

Formal start of construction of both arrays was scheduled to start on July 1.

Conclusion of construction is scheduled for July 2029.

However, both arrays will be able to start doing science years before they are completed. Science commissioning and the start of observations is expected during 2024.

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

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