Square Kilometer Array: a "lift-off" the world's largest telescope

 

One of the biggest science projects of the 21st century is Go!

The parabolic antennas

The first meeting of the Council of the Square Kilometer Array Observatory has drawn up action plans that will lead to the assembly of the largest telescope on Earth over the next decade.

Member states agreed to 1,000 pages of documents covering everything from the authority to open a bank account to dealing with industrial contractors.

The SKA telescope will consist of a wide variety of radio receivers.

These will be placed throughout South Africa and Australia.

The matrix's accuracy and sensitivity, combined with tremendous computing support, will enable astronomers to address some of the fundamental questions in astrophysics today.

How did the first stars shine in the universe? What exactly is "dark energy" - the mysterious form of energy that appears to be separating the universe at an accelerating rate? And even the most basic question - are we alone? SKA's unprecedented sensitivity will pick up any extraterrestrial transmissions.

    • A fuzzy radio explosion installed on a dead star

    • Concern over the impact of satellites on the giant telescope

    • Nations to participate in the Square Kilometer Array Telescope

The international treaty on which the new observatory is based only came into effect last month, enabling this first meeting of the council - which was conducted online due to COVID-19 - to finally move forward with a project that has lasted more than 30 years in drafting.

Professor Phil Diamond, inaugural general manager of SKAO, said: "I think this board meeting really marks the birth of the observatory."

"We became a legal entity on January 15th after the UK ratified our agreement. But at that point, we were an empty vessel. And it was this first council meeting that launched everything that would enable us to start filling that empty vessel," he told BP CNNews.

The Board approved a whole series of policies, regulations, and procedures that will make the observatory a reality.

The next major step, of course, is building the telescope. Invitations to bids are expected to be rolled out to the industry beginning in July, with groundbreaking celebrations expected towards the end of the year.

The observatory is stationed in remote and uninhabited locations in the Karoo in the Northern Cape, South Africa and in Murchison in Western Australia.

The telescope will include a mixture of parabolic antennas, or "dishes," as well as dipole antennas, which are somewhat similar to traditional television antennas. 

The goal is to build an effective collection area of ​​hundreds of thousands of square meters.

The system will operate over a frequency range from about 50 MHz to 25 GHz at the end. In terms of wavelength, this is in the range of centimeters to meters.

With ergonomically designed sensitivity, this telescope should enable very faint radio signals coming from cosmic sources billions of light-years from Earth, including those emitted in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang when galaxies and first stars began forming .

"We are entering an era where the giant telescope will work together in the coming decades to try to understand the mysteries of the universe," said SKAO Council Chair, Dr. Catherine Cesarsky.

"Behind it all are many years of work by many people all over the world."

Dr Leah Morabito, a member of the UK Science Committee SKA, of the University of Durham, commented, “This is a historic step in the process of setting up and operating SKA, and especially after this year of global uncertainty, it is inspiring to change our interest in the exciting future of SKA.”

The council meeting was held on Wednesday and Thursday led by the countries that have ratified the SKA Treaty: Australia and South Africa, as the host countries of the telescope; Italy, Holland, Portugal; And the United Kingdom, which serves as the headquarters of the organization and has offices in the famous Jodrell Bank radio observatory.

The meeting was also attended by representatives from Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. They sat as observers at this point because they had not completed their parliamentary approval that would enable them to ratify. Everyone is expected to do so at the appropriate time.

Building and operating SKA during this decade will likely consume about 2 billion euros (1.8 billion pounds; 2.4 billion dollars).