CSIRO will play a lead role in the next stage of the development of the world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), to be located in Australia and in Africa.
This follows the SKA Organisation (SKAO) announcement that it has allocated R&D ‘work packages’ to consortia from around the world. The consortia, involving science institutes and industry, will progress the design and validation processes of the SKA to a stage that will enable tendering and build of the telescope from 2017.
CSIRO will head up the largest of these consortia, the SKA Dish Array Consortium, and will be responsible for the design work relating to the SKA’s 2500 antenna dishes and receivers, and the development of innovative receivers known as phased array feeds (or PAFs).
In addition, CSIRO will lead the Infrastructure Australia Consortium in charge of designing and costing critical SKA infrastructure at the Australian SKA site (the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia). This would include the provision of power, communications, buildings, water and access to the site.
“The SKA is an international project, with global scale and huge scientific ambition,