Carnarvon - Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom with eight of his counterparts from around Africa and scores of dignitaries will converge on this tiny Karoo town on Thursday to mark a milestone in South Africa’s Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
At a remote spot on the Karoo plains, 80km outside the town, Hanekom will launch the first completed antenna of the MeerKAT radio telescope, part of the SKA project. He will also open the MeerKAT Karoo Array Processor Building, a data centre buried 5m underground to protect MeerKAT from radio frequency interference.
After South Africa won the SKA bid, the international SKA project included MeerKAT in SKA’s phase one. This phase will make up 25 percent of the full project. MeerKAT will be made up of 64 antennae and when it is completed in 2016, will be the most sensitive radio astronomy telescope in the southern hemisphere.
It is some years from completion, but astronomers are already in line to use it and so far, more than 500 from around the world have been allocated time. This translates into a total of five years’ user time that has been booked, when astronomers will conduct surveys of the universe using the telescope.
There are more than 100 scientists and engineers on the MeerKAT project. - Cape Times