The go-ahead has been given to build what will be the world’s largest radio telescope network. Last week the council of the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) gave the green light to construct the €2bn Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in Australia and southern Africa. To be complete by 2028, it is anticipated that the SKA will operate for the next 50 years.
As its name suggests, the SKA is a facility that intends to have a total collecting area of 1 km2, achieved by spreading out thousands of individual dishes in southern Africa as well as a million wire antennas in Australia. SKA is designed to provide astronomers with unprecedented views of the first stars in the universe and observations of gravitational waves via the radio emissions from pulsars, among other things.
To read more, click here.