Square kilometre array project
Square kilometre array built!
How does the square kilometre array work
Construction begins on world's largest radio telescope after decades of preparations
Ground has finally been broken today at two sites in Africa and Australia that will host the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO), the largest radio telescope in the world.
Construction of the SKA-Mid array, to be located in the Karoo desert in South Africa, and the The SKA-Low array, in Western Australia north of Perth, has begun after 30 years of preparations and a year and a half of preconstruction work that involved selecting the right companies for the job.
"The SKA project has been many years in the making," Catherine Cesarsky, the chair of the SKAO council, who attended a ground-breaking ceremony at the South African site, said in a statement.
"Today, we gather here to mark another important chapter in this 30-year journey that we’ve been on together. A journey to deliver the world’s largest scientific instrument. After 18 months of intense activities around the wo