Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Africa Office hosting a AAAS EurekAlert!
18 February 2011
United States
South Africa, along with eight partner countries, and a joint Australia-New Zealand bid represent the two final candidate sites for the construction and development of the SKA. The core location for the Africa bid is situated in South Africa’s Northern Cape Province – an ideal position for radioastronomy observatories and related facilities. Its geographical location offers a wide coverage of the astronomically “rich” southern sky, and it is the best location to study the Milky Way, i.e. our galaxy. South Africa is and will remain a radio quiet zone, with low levels of radio frequency interference. South Africa has very little light pollution in comparison to other industrialized countries, at the same time; it offers the necessary infrastructures, such as roads, electricity and communication.
Expected to be operational by 2025, SKA will be an array of radio antennas extending over a million square meters, and it will become, by far, the most powerful radio observatory ever built. In addition to producing groundbreaking science, SKA will drive innovation in several technological fields, including (but not limited to) ICT, wireless communication, sensor technology, renewable energy.
In addition, South Africa is currently building one of the largest and most powerful radio telescopes in the world, MeerKAT, a groundbreaking project in its own right, which is meant to be a precursor to the SKA. MeerKAT is being constructed adjacent to the site proposed for the SKA, near the small town of Carnarvon in the Northern Cape Province. It will develop the necessary technologies appropriate for the SKA, including the use of composite, one-piece reflectors, wideband receivers, low-cost, high-reliability cryogenic systems, and reconfigurable digital processing systems. Its 64 dishes will be installed by the end of 2016. MeerKAT will subsequently become the core of the larger SKA array.
Additional information on the SKA Africa: http://www.ska.ac.za/(opens in new window)
Expected to be operational by 2025, SKA will be an array of radio antennas extending over a million square meters, and it will become, by far, the most powerful radio observatory ever built. In addition to producing groundbreaking science, SKA will drive innovation in several technological fields, including (but not limited to) ICT, wireless communication, sensor technology, renewable energy.
In addition, South Africa is currently building one of the largest and most powerful radio telescopes in the world, MeerKAT, a groundbreaking project in its own right, which is meant to be a precursor to the SKA. MeerKAT is being constructed adjacent to the site proposed for the SKA, near the small town of Carnarvon in the Northern Cape Province. It will develop the necessary technologies appropriate for the SKA, including the use of composite, one-piece reflectors, wideband receivers, low-cost, high-reliability cryogenic systems, and reconfigurable digital processing systems. Its 64 dishes will be installed by the end of 2016. MeerKAT will subsequently become the core of the larger SKA array.
Additional information on the SKA Africa: http://www.ska.ac.za/(opens in new window)