TechCentralTechCentral
    Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentralTechCentral
    NEWSLETTER
    • News

      Fixing SA’s power crisis is not complex: it simply takes the will to do better

      12 August 2022

      Consortium makes unsolicited bid for state’s 40% stake in Telkom

      12 August 2022

      Actually, solar users should pay more to access the grid – here’s why

      12 August 2022

      Telkom says MTN talks remain on track

      12 August 2022

      Analysis | Rain muddies the waters with approach to Telkom

      11 August 2022
    • World

      Tencent woes mount, even after $560-billion selloff

      12 August 2022

      Huawei just booked its first sales rise since US blacklisting

      12 August 2022

      Apple remains upbeat about iPhone sales even as Android world suffers

      12 August 2022

      Ether at two-month high as upgrade to blockchain passes major test

      12 August 2022

      Gaming industry’s fortunes fade as pandemic ends

      11 August 2022
    • In-depth

      African unicorn Flutterwave battles fires on multiple fronts

      11 August 2022

      The length of Earth’s days has been increasing – and no one knows why

      7 August 2022

      As Facebook fades, the Mad Men of advertising stage a comeback

      2 August 2022

      Crypto breaks the rules. That’s the point

      27 July 2022

      E-mail scams are getting chillingly personal

      17 July 2022
    • Podcasts

      Qush on infosec: why prevention is always better than cure

      11 August 2022

      e4’s Adri Führi on encouraging more women into tech careers

      10 August 2022

      How South Africa can woo more women into tech

      4 August 2022

      Book and check-in via WhatsApp? FlySafair is on it

      28 July 2022

      Interview: Why Dell’s next-gen PowerEdge servers change the game

      28 July 2022
    • Opinion

      No reason South Africa should have a shortage of electricity: Ramaphosa

      11 July 2022

      Ntshavheni’s bias against the private sector

      8 July 2022

      South Africa can no longer rely on Eskom alone

      4 July 2022

      Has South Africa’s advertising industry lost its way?

      21 June 2022

      Rob Lith: What Icasa’s spectrum auction means for SA companies

      13 June 2022
    • Company Hubs
      • 1-grid
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Amplitude
      • Atvance Intellect
      • Axiz
      • BOATech
      • CallMiner
      • Digital Generation
      • E4
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • IBM
      • Kyocera Document Solutions
      • Microsoft
      • Nutanix
      • One Trust
      • Pinnacle
      • Skybox Security
      • SkyWire
      • Tarsus on Demand
      • Videri Digital
      • Zendesk
    • Sections
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud computing
      • Consumer electronics
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Energy
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Motoring and transport
      • Public sector
      • Science
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home»News»SKA ready and raring to go

    SKA ready and raring to go

    News By Sarah Wild27 August 2013
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Artist's impression of SKA dishes (image: SKA Organisation/Swinburne Astronomy Productions)
    Artist’s impression of SKA dishes (image: SKA Organisation/Swinburne Astronomy Productions)

    In all of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) excitement, we’ve forgotten that it is first and foremost a scientific instrument, created to allow scientists to answer questions that can’t be answered with existing equipment: how are galaxies created? Are there other habitable planets? What is dark matter? What is gravity?

    The SKA will be the largest radio telescope in the world, comprising thousands of antennas in Australia, South Africa and other African partner countries. Since it was decided in May last year that the telescope would be split between two continents, scientists and engineers have been working on how this split will work without compromising the science that the SKA is expected to perform.

    The rather unwieldy task of designing the telescope has been broken up into work packages, with international consortia submitting proposals.

    “All of the consortia are set up, and they were approved by the board at the last meeting [last month],” SKA Organisation director-general Phil Diamond said.

    In the next two to three weeks, the consortia would have “negotiation meetings” with the SKA Organisation “setting up the mechanics of interaction between the [SKA] office and the consortia”, Diamond said, mentioning milestones, work reports and the frequency of meetings. “Once consortia know their statement of work, they will be starting work.”

    All SKA Organisation members were part of “several work packages, but not all”, Diamond said.

    South Africa was involved in a number of these international consortia, said Jasper Horrell, GM for science computing and innovation at SKA South Africa. It would be leading the consortia on assembly and integration, which is “systems engineering to pull everything together to make sure things work on site”; the infrastructure for South Africa, he said.

    The country would also play a role in the dish, science data processor and signal and data transport consortia, through industry and academic players.

    SKA South Africa had also subsidised companies’ involvement, Horrell said. “We’ve allocated funding on a cost recovery basis … to make it attractive for companies to be a part of this.”

    He said that there were agreed milestones, and that companies would be reimbursed “based on delivery”.

    While Horrell said that R50m had been allocated over all to these companies for cost recovery, he would not name them until the SKA Organisation had finalised the work packages.

    Last month, the SKA Organisation capped the capital expenditure of SKA phase one to €650m. In phase one, Australia and South Africa’s precursor telescopes, Askap and MeerKAT respectively, will be incorporated into what will become the SKA. As part of the bid to host the giant telescope, both countries developed precursor telescopes. The first dish of the 64-dish MeerKAT telescope will be completed by the beginning of next year. The full telescope is expected to come online in 2016.

    The SKA Organisation anticipated phase one coming online in 2020, but this is only 10% of the final SKA. This means that phase one — which has a science case of its own that dictates the technical specifications required — has to be able to expand into the full SKA.

    According to the draft “SKA Design Reference Mission: SKA Phase 1”, two aspects of the larger SKA science case have been selected as the focus for “SKA Phase 1: understanding neutral hydrogen and pulsars”.

    Investigating neutral hydrogen will help scientists understand what happened just after the Big Bang (and also prove that the Big Bang did occur) and how galaxies are formed. Pulsars are massive stars that have gone supernova and emit a strong beam of periodic radio waves. By identifying more of these pulsars — there have in fact been very few useful pulsars identified — scientists would be able to test Einstein’s theory of gravity waves and understand how gravity actually works.  — (c) 2013 Mail & Guardian

    • Wild is author of Searching African Skies: the SKA and South Africa’s Quest to Hear the Songs of the Stars
    • Visit the Mail & Guardian Online, the smart news source
    Jasper Horrell MeerKAT Phil Diamond SKA Square Kilometre Array
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Previous ArticleANC discussing Pule at ‘high level’
    Next Article This is the future of networking

    Related Posts

    Fixing SA’s power crisis is not complex: it simply takes the will to do better

    12 August 2022

    Consortium makes unsolicited bid for state’s 40% stake in Telkom

    12 August 2022

    Actually, solar users should pay more to access the grid – here’s why

    12 August 2022
    Add A Comment

    Comments are closed.

    Promoted

    Get your brand in front of TechCentral’s amazing audience

    12 August 2022

    Pricing Beyond CMYK: printers answer the FAQs

    11 August 2022

    How secure is your cloud?

    10 August 2022
    Opinion

    No reason South Africa should have a shortage of electricity: Ramaphosa

    11 July 2022

    Ntshavheni’s bias against the private sector

    8 July 2022

    South Africa can no longer rely on Eskom alone

    4 July 2022

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2022 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.