Square Kilometre Array Observatory Launched

• 09 Feb 2021

• The Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) Council held its inaugural meeting and approved the establishment of the world’s largest radio telescope.
• The new venture is being deemed as important following the collapse of one of the most prolific radio telescopes in the world, the Arecibo in Puerto Rico, in December last year.
• The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an intergovernmental radio telescope project being planned to be built in Australia and South Africa.
• The headquarters of the SKA are located at the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, England.
• The SKAO has been designed to operate for more than five decades, and the construction of the first phase of the SKA is estimated to be completed by 2027.

Location of SKAO Radio Telescopes

• Under the organisation, two radio telescope networks would be set up at
  • South Africa:Would be located in the Karoo region and will be operated by SARAO or the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO).
  • Australia: The telescope network in Australia would be located on the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Aim of this Project

• The scientific aims of this project include the studying of gravitational waves in order to test the theories proposed by Albert Einstein, along with improving the human understanding of the Universe’s evolution.
• Apart from that, the SKAO also hopes to look for signs of life in outer space, while mapping hundreds of millions of galaxies.

Participating Countries

• SKA is a project marking the participation of 40% of the global population, in terms of the countries that are participating.
• As many as 16 countries are currently a part of this project either at a government or national-coordination level or as observers. This includes India, Australia, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Germany, France, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, China, and Sweden.
• Moreover, there are eight African countries which are participating in coordinated action in order to support the expansion of the SKA project in the continent in the future.

SKAO & India

• India is participating at a national-coordination level, which is led by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
• A total of 19 institutions are a part of the Indian coordination team, including IISc Bangalore, IIT Indore, IIT Kharagpur, and IIT Kanpur among others, and these institutions are located across the country.