Africa is ready to host the world’s most powerful radio telescope, The Square Kilometre Array (SKA). Following an initial identification of sites suitable for the SKA by the international SKA steering committee in 2006, Africa and Australia are the finalists. A consortium of the major International Science funding Agencies, in consultation with the SKA science and engineering committee (SSEC), will announce the selected site for the SKA in 2012.

At about 50-100 times more sensitive than any other radio telescope on earth, the SKA will be able to probe the edges of our Universe. It will help us answer fundamental questions in astronomy, physics and cosmology, including the nature of dark energy and dark matter. It will be a powerful time machine that scientists will use to go back in time to explore the origins of the first galaxies, stars and planets. If there is life somewhere else in the Universe, the SKS will help us find it.

The construction of the SKA is expected to cost about 1.5 billion Euro. The operations and maintenance of a large telescope normally cost about 10% of the capital costs per year. That means the international SKA consortium would be spending approximately 100 to 150 million Euro per year on the telescope. It is expected that a significant portion of the capital, operations and maintenance costs would be spent in the host country. Africa offers a competitive and affordable solution for construction, operating and maintaining the SKA.

THE SKA IN AFRICA

A major component of the SKA telescope will be an extensive array of approximately 3 000 antennas. Half of these will be concentrated in a 5 km diameter central region, and the rest will be distributed out to 3 000 km from this central concentration. Africa’s bid proposes that the core of the telescope be located in an arid area of the Northern Cape Province of the Republic of South Africa, with about three antenna stations in Namibia, four in Botswana and one each in Mozambique, Mauritius, Madagascar, Kenya, Ghana and Zambia. Each antenna station will consist of about 30 individual antennas.

These antennas will all be connected via a data communications network to a very large and powerful data processing facility on the core SKA site in the Northern Cape Province. The combined collection area of all these antennas will add up to one square kilometer. The telescope will be operated and monitored remotely from Cape Town, where the operations and science centre will be located.

The SKA will be one of the largest scientific research facilities in the world and will consolidate Africa as a major hub for astronomy in the world. It will attract the best scientists and engineers to work in Africa and will provide unrivalled opportunities for scientists and engineers from African countries to engage with transformational science and cutting edge instrumentation and to collaborate in joint projects with the most renowned universities and research institutions in the world.

Hosting the SKA would be a major accomplishment for the Astronomy Geographic Advantage programme (AGAP), an initiative by the South African government to establish a hub of world-class astronomy facilities in Southern Africa. Other major astronomy facilities in the region include the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) in the Karoo, and the HESS gamma ray telescope in Namibia.