Divisions:
HartRAO/KAT
The SKA project
South Africa is ready to host the world's most powerful radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in southern Africa. Following an initial identification of sites suitable for the SKA by the International SKA Steering Committee in 2006, southern Africa and Australia are the finalists. A consortium of the major international science funding agencies, in consultation with the SKA Science and Engineering Committee (SSEC), will announce the selected site for the SKA in 2012.
At about 50 – 100 times more sensitive than any other radio telescope on Earth, the SKA will be able to probe the edges of our Universe. It will help us to answer fundamental questions in astronomy, physics and cosmology, including the nature of dark energy and dark matter. It will be a powerful time machine that scientists will use to go back in time to explore the origins of the first galaxies, stars and planets. If there is life somewhere else in the Universe, the SKA will help us find it.
The construction of the SKA is expected to cost about 1.5 billion Euro. The operations and maintenance of a large telescope normally cost about 10% of the capital costs per year. That means the international SKA consortium would be spending approximately 100 to 150 million Euro per year on the telescope. It is expected that a significant portion of the capital, operations and maintenance costs would be spent in the host country. South Africa offers a competitive and affordable solution for constructing, operating and maintaining the SKA.
MeerKAT - SA's SKA Precursor
South Africa is building the Karoo Array Telescope (MeerKAT) which is a precursor instrument for the SKA, but will in its own right be amongst the largest and most powerful telescopes in the world. MeerKAT is being constructed adjacent to the site proposed for the SKA near the small town of Carnarvon in the Northern Cape Province. MeerKAT will develop technologies appropriate to the SKA, including the use of composite, one-piece reflectors, single-pixel wideband receivers, low-cost, high-reliability cryogenic systems, and reconfigurable digital processing systems.
The MeerKAT team is now completed KAT-7, a seven-dish prototype interferometer array in the Karoo. The construction and commissioning of the full MeerKAT array (consisting of 80 dishes) will follow. A high speed data network will link the telescope site in the Karoo to the control centre in Cape Town. The telescope will be commissioned in 2013.
For more information, visit www.ska.ac.za