An international panel is expected to announce the winner from the two short-listed continents in 2012, enabling the victor to host the 1.5 billion euros Square Kilometer Array (SKA) telescope, which will be 50 times more sensitive and 10,000 times faster than any other radio imaging telescope built.
"It is a huge endeavor we are undertaking," Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s minister of science and technology, said at the Northern Cape location identified as the core site for the new telescope if the African bid succeeds. "We believe we have a good chance of being successful," she said. "SKA represents an unprecedented opportunity for the development of scientific and technological skills and expertise in Africa."
The SKA telescope would eventually consist of about 3,000 antennas, half of them concentrated at the main site on the outskirts of Carnarvon in the Northern Cape, with the rest distributed in Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Ghana, Mauritius, Madagascar, Kenya and Zambia.
Already at Carnarvon, chosen because of minimal interference from cell phones or broadcast transmitters, South Africa has built the first seven antennas of its Karoo Array Telescope. "The SKA will look back into the beginnings of the universe, over 12 billion years ago, when galaxies started to form out of the Big Bang. We will be able to study the evolution of the universe," project scientist Deborah Shepherd told Reuters.
Source: Reuters
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