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MeerKAT - SA's SKA Precursor

South Africa is building the Karoo Array Telescope (MeerKAT) which is a precursor instrument for the SKA, but will in its own right be amongst the largest and most powerful telescopes in the world. MeerKAT is being constructed adjacent to the site proposed for the SKA near the small town of Carnarvon in the Northern Cape Province. MeerKAT will develop technologies appropriate to the SKA, including the use of composite, one-piece reflectors, single-pixel wideband receivers, low-cost, high-reliability cryogenic systems, and reconfigurable digital processing systems.

Following the successful building and testing of a prototype dish at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory near Johannesburg, the MeerKAT team is now working on KAT-7, a seven-dish prototype interferometer array in the Karoo. The construction and commissioning of the full MeerKAT array (consisting of 80 dishes) will follow at the same site. A high speed data network will link the telescope site in the Karoo to the control centre in Cape Town. The telescope will be commissioned in 2013.