From the earliest humans, people have wondered about the planets, the stars, the galaxies and the Universe itself. New telescopes have almost always revealed things that we had not imagined.

Astronomy allows us to see back in time, because the light waves from very distant stars or galaxies take a long time to travel through space to our telescopes, so we see them as they were a very long time ago. Now astronomers want to build the most powerful telescope ever, to see back to before the first stars and galaxies formed. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be a radio telescope – instead of seeing light waves, it will make pictures from radio waves.

South Africa, with eight African countries as partners, and Australia have been picked as possible sites to build the SKA. South Africa has proposed the Karoo in the Northern Cape as the core site. Scientists are now comparing the radio interference at both sites, as well as the cost of building and operating the telescope in Africa compared to Australia.

The budget for building the SKA is €1.5 billion and it will cost about €150 million per year to operate it. The SKA will be built and funded by a consortium, which currently consists of sixteen countries. The African Union Heads of State have given their full support to the African bid. A decision on where to site the SKA will be taken in 2012.

South Africa has already demonstrated its excellent science and engineering skills by designing and starting to build the MeerKAT telescope – as a pathfinder to the SKA. The first seven dishes, KAT-7, are complete and have already produced its first pictures. MeerKAT is attracting great interest internationally – more than 500 international astronomers and 58 from Africa submitted proposals to do science with MeerKAT once it is complete.

The technology being developed for MeerKAT is cutting-edge and the project is creating a large group of young scientists and engineers with world-class expertise in the technologies which will be crucial in the next 10 – 20 years, such as very fast computing, very fast data transport, large networks of sensors, software radios and imaging algorithms.

Since 2005, the African SKA Human Capital Development Programme has awarded 293 grants for studies in astronomy and engineering from undergraduate to post-doctoral level, while also investing in training programmes for technicians. Astronomy courses are being taught as a result of the SKA Africa project in Kenya, Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius (which has had a radio telescope for many years) and are soon to start in other countries.

Africa needs science and science needs Africa. After all, Africa is the home of humankind and the place where technology and intellectual activity first developed.

Want to know more?

Brochure: SKA Africa
A brochure about South African astronomy - providing the complete astronomy solution.