EXPERT REACTION: Construction starts on world’s largest radio telescopes in Australia and South Africa

To put the sensitivity of the SKA into perspective, the SKA could detect a mobile phone in the pocket of an astronaut on Mars, 225 million kilometres away. More excitingly, if there are intelligent societies on nearby stars with technology similar to ours, the SKA could detect the aggregate 'leakage' radiation from their radio and telecommunication networks -- the first telescope sensitive enough to achieve this feat. The tremendous sensitivity of the SKA will allow astronomers to peer back billions of years to 'Cosmic Dawn': the epoch when the first stars in the Universe were forming. From searching for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), to detecting signals from Cosmic Dawn, there are so many exciting science questions the SKA will answer. We are going to need more astronomers, engineers, and data scientists!

The Square Kilometre Array telescope has been the “next big thing” in radio astronomy since I started my PhD over 15 years ago, so it is incredibly exciting that the project is now reaching the milestone of breaking ground at its Western Australia site. The next few years are going to be a whirlwind for the large team of scientists and engineers that will be building and commissioning this complex instrument, and the science community can’t wait to get our hands on the first science data later this decade.

My team and I are honoured to have been chosen to build the frequency distribution system of the SKA mid telescope, using our design to keep the dishes of the sprawling observatory perfectly synchronised over the hundreds of kilometres it will span, once complete.   
 
Affectionately known as the ‘beating heart’ of the telescope, this cutting-edge technology will send precise timing signals to each dish in the spiralling array, ensuring they do not degrade as they travel over the vast distances of fibreoptic cable which connects the array together.

This is a major milestone in the history of astronomy research and our constant effort to understand our place in the Universe. Thanks to the development of cutting-edge technology, unthinkable a decade ago, we are now able to start construction of what will be the most sensitive radio telescope on the planet.
 
The start of construction of the SKA has been possible only thanks to the joint effort of several countries around the world, who share the vision and potential life-changing impact that such facilities can have for human-kind in the decades to come. 
 
The simple idea of building a telescope one kilometre wide has already projected Western Australia as one of the international hot-spots in astrophysics and a leader in the development of cutting-edge technology. Research centres such as the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth, which was originally set up to help Australia’s bid to host the SKA, have been able to attract to WA the best scientists and engineers in the world to work on the SKA project.
 
It is amazing how, even before the start of full construction, WA is clearly the go-to-place for radio astronomy research, and the construction and start of operation of the SKA will further lift WA’s and Australia’s standing in the world as one of the best places to innovate in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, and engineering.

The most fascinating challenge with SKA is the extraordinary data volume that will be generated from this radio telescope. We simply can't store the data to process as we please. We need to get on with it ASAP and be super creative on how and what we really need to keep. Most of the data generated must be intentionally deleted. SKA is pushing our limits on how to deal with highly complex signals and driving discoveries. SKA is the real deal when it comes to Big Data. Data analysts will be in demand to support this project.

The SKA-Low telescope will be a leap ahead of current technology and allow an unprecedented view of the Universe with incredible sensitivity, which will allow us to observe the distant Universe in much more detail than anything we've done so far. 
 
SKA-Low is being built far from large population centres and away from contaminating signals from mobile phone towers and radio stations. Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory where the SKA-Low telescope is being built on Wajarri Country is perhaps the best site for low-frequency astronomy anywhere on Earth.
 
The latest digital technology also means SKA-Low will look at a large part of the sky all at once. It will speed up discovery – we’ll have a much higher chance to discover new phenomena. So many of the most exciting discoveries in astronomy have been found when we built new powerful telescopes and just went looking!

This is an exciting moment for Australian science. Australia has been at the forefront of radioastronomy since the end of the Second World War, with outstanding astronomers such as Ruby Payne-Scott, and amazing antennas such as the Parkes radiotelescope.  
 
We love to look up at the stars and galaxies in the night sky, but much of the universe isn’t actually in the visible light range at all. We need special instruments to stand in for our feeble human senses. The SKA is made up of thousands of small antennas which can be coordinated as if they were a single massive dish. It will be able to hear the earliest stars and galaxies forming in a fine-grained detail that we’ve never had access to before. Who knows what we’ll learn?

It’s a momentous day for global astronomy, marking the beginning of a 50-year scientific legacy of discovery and human endeavour. Over a thousand people have worked for 20 years to make this a reality – and each will be feeling proud of this collective achievement today.

The SKA will be a transformational science instrument for the 21st Century. Having been fascinated about black holes for many decades I am extremely excited by what it will reveal about the earliest black holes as they formed in the young Universe. One of the biggest mysteries in astronomy is how the first black holes formed and the SKA will answer this question. With many others I have been planning the science that the SKA will do on the coming decades, however the shear power of these telescopes will uncover phenomena that astronomers have not even imagined yet.

The SKA will be transformative for our understanding of the Universe, mapping its structure across cosmic time, exploring its earliest periods of star formation, and testing gravity in extreme environments. SKA's exciting and ambitious science goals demand that the telescopes push technological boundaries and harness the collective knowledge and expertise of scientists and engineers from around the world, making it a truly global endeavour.

The establishment and eventual operation of the SKA again showcases the important role that Australia has played over many decades in relation to space communications, the tracking of space objects, engagement in space activities, and the astronomical observation of space. It is a unique and highly significant project that will advance further our understanding of space in many ways.

It also highlights the importance of cooperation and multilateral engagement in space, an issue that is crucial to the ongoing development of governance frameworks for new activities that will be possible as a result of technological advances. It reminds us of the importance of space, how it touches every person on the planet, and how Australia can play an important role in the promotion of the peaceful uses of outer space and the imperative of sustainable space activities.

The SKA is the most exciting project in Australian astronomy, and I expect it will be every bit as important to our understanding of the universe as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. After decades of work it is finally happening. This will inform the work of nearly every astronomer in the world. For example, in our team, working on exoplanets, our colleagues at the precursor telescope LOFAR have revealed the first tantalising hints of radio emission from planets connected magnetically to their stars. The SKA will be an order of magnitude more sensitive, and conclusively show us what is happening - a completely new window on other worlds.

The Square Kilometre Array is the largest telescope ever constructed, and likely ever will be, connecting across continents to create a world-spanning facility allowing us to see essentially across the entire observable universe.
 
Decades in the planning and at least a decade more in the building, the Square Kilometre Array is such a mammoth undertaking that astronomers create it not for themselves but for the future generation of scientists in the decades to come making it not just a multi-national but also multi-generational project.
 
The science goals are as vast as the telescope itself, from searching for forming planets and signs of alien life, to mapping out the cosmic web of dark matter and the growing of galaxies within those vast universe-spanning filaments.  
 
The technological spinouts are just as exciting as the science, with supercomputers and advanced electronics being pushed to their limits to generate and handle the data to come from the telescope, as well as powerful new AI created to explore and make those discoveries within torrent of data – as much data as exists on the internet today streaming out of the telescope everyday! Whether it was WiFi being created by the last generation of CSIRO radio astronomers or companies like Quasar Satellite Technologies created by today’s astronomers, the sheer scale of the SKA means it will advance our entire economy and provide future employment in ways unthinkable to us all now.
 
Just as with Hubble, the biggest discoveries by such next-generation telescopes are of things entirely unknown to science today. Astronomers worldwide will be celebrating this ground-breaking for what it will mean for scientists in the decades ahead.

I am so excited that the construction of the SKA Observatory has finally started! The SKAO has undergone more than two decades of planning and design work, spanning my entire career. Now that the construction has commenced the SKAO is becoming a reality and we can look towards doing science with this outstanding telescope before the end of the decade.

The Square Kilometre Array is a game-changer, not just for radio astronomy but for our collective understanding of the Universe. After many years of planning and designing it is incredibly exciting that construction has begun. Earlier this year I visited the site, and it was an amazing experience. This telescope will become an Australian icon: operating remotely to avoid radio interference, it will be able to detect extraordinarily faint signals from space. 

The SKA will help us understand the evolution of the Universe, explore the time when the first stars were created, and investigate the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. Personally I’m most excited about the impact the SKA will have on our understanding of the transient Universe. The SKA will produce the most sensitive surveys of the radio sky we have ever seen. We will be able to identify rare events that change rapidly, including the violent explosions when massive stars die. It will reveal a cacophony of flaring radio stars and exoplanetary systems that have been invisible until now, and even allow us to work out which systems may be habitable.