Square Kilometer Array Project, South Africa/Australia

name of the project
Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Project.

Location
The Karoo region of South Africa and Murchison County in Western Australia were chosen as host locations.

The Karoo in South Africa will host the core of the high and medium frequency satellite dishes, which will eventually extend across the African continent. Murchison County in Australia will host the low frequency dishes.

Project Owner(s)
The SKA Observatory (SKAO), comprising Australia, China, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa and the United Kingdom, is expected to be joined by other countries in due course.

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

Project description
The SKA will offer a collecting area of ​​one million square meters, making it the largest radio telescope array ever built.

The project will use three types of antennas (radio wave receivers) – parabolic antennas, medium-frequency array antennas and low-frequency array antennas – to provide continuous frequency coverage from 70 MHz to 10 GHz. Combining the signals from the antennas will create a telescope with a collection area equivalent to a parabolic antenna with an area of ​​about 1 km2.

The project will include two radio telescope arrays, currently called SKA-Mid and SKA-Low.

The South African instrument, called SKA-Mid, will consist of 197 parabolic antennas and will operate in the frequency range from 350 MHz to 15.4 GHz. The Australian instrument, called SKA-Low, will consist of 131,072 dipole antennas and will operate in the frequency range from 50 MHz to 350 MHz.

SKA-Mid will include the 64 dishes from the South African precursor to the SKA, the MeerKAT radio telescope array. The Australian precursor, the SKA Pathfinder (better known as Askap), will serve as the measuring instrument for the SKA.

The central regions, in Australia and South Africa, will contain 5 km diameter cores each, one for each antenna type. Fifty percent of the collection area will be in the central cores. The aperture array antennas will extend to approximately 200 km from the central regions. In Africa, the dishes will be positioned at remote stations, located 3,000 km from the central regions.

Construction of the SKA will be phased, meaning that the SKA will be able to begin operating before the work is completed.

Job creation potential
Five hundred engineers from 100 institutions in 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 scientific dossier for the SKA telescopes.

Capital expenditure
The overall financing commitment for the project is 2 billion euros, in the economic conditions of 2021. Each year that passes, this amount increases according to the inflation rate.

Expected start/end date
The entire network is expected to begin operating by July 2028.

Latest developments
SKAO announced on 10 July that the first telescope dish for its SKA-Mid array had been assembled on site in the North Cape.

The operation was carried out by a team comprising members of SKAO, the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory and the Chinese company CETC54. The Chinese company not only manufactures the dishes, but also leads the ten-country consortium that designed them.

The first phase of SKA-Mid will consist of only four antennas and will be called Array Assembly 0.5 (AA 0.5). This quartet will be used for testing and process evaluation, before the start of large-scale production of the dishes. SKA-Mid will cover the radio frequency range from 350 MHz to 15.4 GHz, with the ultimate goal of increasing it to 24 GHz.

The contract to build the SKA-Mid band 2 receiver (each antenna will be equipped with several receivers) was awarded to the South African company EMSS Antennas. Other components of the SKA-Mid are manufactured in Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Deployment of the much simpler and smaller (only 2 m high) SKA-Low antennas began in Australia in March. More than 1,000 of them have been deployed, divided into four groups or “stations”. SKA-Low will consist of 512 such stations, totalling 131,072 antennas, covering the frequency range from 50 MHz to 350 MHz.

Key contracts, suppliers and consultants
Around 70 contracts will be awarded by SKAO in its member states, with calls for tender being organised in the countries.

Contracts awarded to date: 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, National Institute of Astrophysics, ALTAR Innovation, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, Critical Software (software development); Zutari (MID infrastructure professional services); SARAO (professional services); AVNET Silica (FPGA SPS); Sanitas EG (iTPM SPS and subracks); EMSS Antennas (SKA-Mid dish receivers); Power Adenco Joint Venture (construction of major civil infrastructure for SKA-Mid); South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (software); EMCOM, VIVO and Zutari; CETC54 (telescopic dish manufacturer).

Contact details for project information
SKA South Africa, email enquiries@ska.ac.za.