Project Timeline-SKA project "Square Kilometer Array"

Ever heard of the SKA-the Square Kilometer Array? I came across it while browsing the web for something to bring to ATS and this sounds very exciting. Although most probably wouldn't hear about this outside of scientific circles or higher education, its definitely worth the mention. The Square Kilometer Array is being built as the most powerful telescope ever built and it will have two locations, one in S Africa and one in Australia..

Did You Know?
The SKA will be so sensitive that it will be able to detect an airport radar on a planet tens of light years away.

Did You Know?
The data collected by the SKA in a single day would take nearly two million years to playback on an ipod.

Did You Know?
The SKA central computer will have the processing power of about one hundred million PCs.

Did You Know?
The SKA will use enough optical fibre to wrap twice around the Earth!

Did You Know?
The aperture arrays in the SKA could produce more than 100 times the global internet traffic.

The SKA was originally conceived in 1991 with an international working group set up in 1993. This led to the signing of the first Memorandum of Agreement in 2000. Considerable early development work then followed up to the short listing of potential sites in 2006. This culminated in the commencement of PrepSKA in 2008 leading to the SKA Organisation becoming a legal entity in 2011 and then shortly the SKA site selection in 2012. Requests for proposals were then sent out and received in 2013, which also saw evaluation and costing fixed. Construction of Phase 1 will take place from 2018 to 2023 – with early science in 2020 – providing an operational array of telescopes capable of carrying out some of the key science set by the community, before scaling up to the full SKA by the late 2020s.

Pretty impressive stats! What does ATS think about this new telescope?


www.skatelescope.org...

Lotta good peoples go hungry/thirsty, without medicine, homeless and hopeless....for this #....
Just sos we can figure out whats happening a million billion lyears away....as if we could do anything about it anyways...
The hungry people are right here right now....
I think its stupidity of the worst kind....
Who the hell approves the expenditures for this stuff like Cern and such...?
I sure didn't....
Screw science feed the world first...

but they need to make it to outer space and beyond. Lyears and such, you said it first.

originally posted by: bandersnatch
Lotta good peoples go hungry/thirsty, without medicine, homeless and hopeless....for this #....
Just sos we can figure out whats happening a million billion lyears away....as if we could do anything about it anyways...
The hungry people are right here right now....
I think its stupidity of the worst kind....
Who the hell approves the expenditures for this stuff like Cern and such...?
I sure didn't....
Screw science feed the world first...

How would we feed the world? Especially if we were all Luddite subsistence farmers without chemical fertilizers, advanced Biology and machinery developed by people who committed their lives to scientific endeavor?

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: bandersnatch
Lotta good peoples go hungry/thirsty, without medicine, homeless and hopeless....for this #....
Just sos we can figure out whats happening a million billion lyears away....as if we could do anything about it anyways...
The hungry people are right here right now....
I think its stupidity of the worst kind....
Who the hell approves the expenditures for this stuff like Cern and such...?
I sure didn't....
Screw science feed the world first...

How would we feed the world? Especially if we were all Luddite subsistence farmers without chemical fertilizers, advanced Biology and machinery developed by people who committed their lives to scientific endeavor?

His argument is pretty much taken right from the script used when they cancelled Apollo. To many poor and hungry to spend all that money on space ships that go to the moon ... So Apollo was cancelled and we fed the poor and hungry.. They bred and now we have 10 times as many poor and hungry. Without jobs and or people educated enough to work at those jobs the future is not something to look forward to for anyone IMO.

Thanks Op for the info... S&F ... I do wish they would spend money on science instead of weapons of war..

originally posted by: 727Sky

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: bandersnatch
Lotta good peoples go hungry/thirsty, without medicine, homeless and hopeless....for this #....
Just sos we can figure out whats happening a million billion lyears away....as if we could do anything about it anyways...
The hungry people are right here right now....
I think its stupidity of the worst kind....
Who the hell approves the expenditures for this stuff like Cern and such...?
I sure didn't....
Screw science feed the world first...

How would we feed the world? Especially if we were all Luddite subsistence farmers without chemical fertilizers, advanced Biology and machinery developed by people who committed their lives to scientific endeavor?

His argument is pretty much taken right from the script used when they cancelled Apollo. To many poor and hungry to spend all that money on space ships that go to the moon ... So Apollo was cancelled and we fed the poor and hungry.. They bred and now we have 10 times as many poor and hungry. Without jobs and or people educated enough to work at those jobs the future is not something to look forward to for anyone IMO.

Thanks Op for the info... S&F ... I do wish they would spend money on science instead of weapons of war..

You're welcome....There will be poor and hungry people; there always will be under the current system of things. That's just how it is. A system built off finite resources can't lead to infinite wealth for everyone. That's just how it is. I vote for more Space infrastructure projects like this to move us forward.

The SKA will not be operational until 2020 at the earliest (acceding to the source). Bummer

This will fit in nicely with other radio telescopes. I had posted on another thread where they linked several ground based interferometers with one in space making a virtual instrument with better resolution than its parts.

For a little more info on this:

The signals from each antenna are recorded on a bank of approximately one-terabyte hard disc drives, and the information is time-stamped using atomic clocks. Once the disc drives are loaded with information, they are carried to the Pete V. Domenici Science Operations Center at the NRAO in Socorro. There the information undergoes signal processing in a powerful set of digital computers that carry out the interferometry.

Source: Wikipedia - Very Long Baseline Array

And that is current ground-based radio telescopes. Here is a quote explaining adding in a satellite based radio telescope to that scheme.

Very long baseline interferometry is a technique used by radio astronomers to electronically link widely-separated radio telescopes together so they work as if they were a single instrument with extraordinarily sharp "vision," or resolving power. The wider the distance between telescopes, the greater the resolving power. By taking this technique into space for the first time, astronomers will approximately triple the resolving power previously available with only ground-based telescopes. The satellite system will have resolving power almost 1,000 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope has at optical wavelengths. The satellite's resolving power is equivalent to being able to see a grain of rice in Tokyo from Los Angeles.

Source, NASA, JPL, 2/1997 LAUNCH WILL CREATE A RADIO TELESCOPE LARGER THAN EARTH

And that was with a satellite launched in 1997! Check out page 2 of the Max Plank link I posted in the thread here: ATS link- Scientists Image Planets Forming Around Nearby Star HL Tau to read up on which antennae they linked up to create a virtual one 8x the diameter of the earth!

Wonder how much more resolution SKA will add?? Cool find! S+F!

a reply to: bandersnatch

I can't help but notice that you spent your money on a computer and internet access for yourself, instead of using it to feed the poor.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded--here and there, now and then--are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.” -- Robert Heinlein

I apologize! My gaff! I figured it out after I left for the day. D'oh!

The SKA is part of SETI. Ooops! So will the SKA be used to find cool things to point the space-ground telescope at or the other way around?

Found an Update

[T]he Square Kilometre Array (SKA), has passed a major milestone. An advanced - and beautiful - feed horn, developed at Chalmers University of Technology, has been delivered for testing in Canada
...
The amplifier uses nanotechnology to amplify the radio waves with as little noise as possible. Normally, noise reduction means we have to cool the amplifier down to a few degrees above absolute zero. Instead, our bespoke amplifier is integrated directly in the feed horn, which means we can retain the telescope's sensitivity without using any cooling at all. For SKA this could mean huge savings in energy, maintenance and investment", [Joel Schleeh] says.

Source: Phys.org, June 16, 2016 - Sweden's biggest contribution yet to the world's largest radio telescope

Nanotechnology! Wonder what they are doing? The fact that it will not require super-cooling is great news. Each antenna will need one fabricated for it (there are 133 15-meter dishes, so only 132 more to go! These are destined for South Africa). They weigh "100 kilograms (~220 lbs.) and are nearly 1 meter wide" according to the source (which has photos).

a reply to: lostbook

Update.

Even operating at a quarter of its eventual capacity, South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope showed off its phenomenal power Saturday, revealing 1,300 galaxies in a tiny corner of the universe where only 70 were known before.

The image released Saturday was the first from MeerKAT, where 16 dishes were formally commissioned the same day.

MeerKAT's full contingent of 64 receptors will be integrated next year into a multi-nation Square Kilometre Array (SKA) which is... set to become the world's most powerful radio telescope.
...
More than 20 countries are members of the SKA, including Britain which hosts the headquarters of the project.

Source: Phy.org, July 17, 2016 - First image released from world's super radio telescope

Photos at the article. Even at 1/4 of the antennas linked up they saw deeper into space, 200 million light years away. That is pretty impressive! And a cute name: MeerKAT. That will be impressive when all 64 are up and running. The article says next year (!!) is that correct? I thought the timeline was 2020. Next year is fine by me.