Square Kilometre Array telescope goes up in Western Australia

William Atkins
Wednesday, 09 September 2009 18:51

Science - Space

During the development of the Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope, other similar radio telescope projects are also in various developmental stages. For instance, the MeerKAT project, being developed in South Africa, will consist (upon completion in 2012) of over fifty 12-meter dishes.

In the Netherlands, the LOFAR project consists of a number of arrays scattered over a large part of northern Europe; while, in the United States, the Allen Telescope Array project currently has 42 arrays already up and running, and is expecting to have 350 operational arrays in the future.

These projects, and others, are all expected to be developed with technologies that, in part, will help to eventually build a much larger telescope project called the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).

Hence, part of the name of the Australian project is "Pathfinder" (as in Australian SKA Pathfinder) to denote it will show the way to the larger SKA project.

Nineteen countries are designing and coordinating the SKA project—which is considered the next-generation radio telescope project (an international project) to these current national projects.

The SKA project, which will consist of an array of telescopes that radiate out about 3,000 kilometers from a central core, will be built in either Australia or South Africa—a decision that will be made in either 2011 or 2012.

In fact, Australia and South Africa are building their systems (ASKAP and MeerKAT, respectively), in part, to show their technical expertise in building SKA in the future.

With SKA construction to begin in 2013, the first preliminary observations by SKA are expected to occur in 2017, with a full operational status by 2022.

Subsequently, the SKA project is expected to provide many answers as to how the universe first started and how it evolved over the last 13.7 billions years or so.

For additional information on Australia’s SKA project (its ASKAP telescope project), check out the March 12, 2009 iTWire article “Trans-continental radio astronomy demo to strengthen Australia’s bid for Square Kilometre Array.”