The world’s largest radio telescope is moving into its final pre-construction phase, following an approval by the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) board of directors.

The design of the €650M first phase of the SKA (SKA1) is now defined, consisting of two complementary world-class instruments –one in Australia, one in South Africa-, both expecting to deliver exciting and transformational science.

“I was impressed by the strong support from the Board and the momentum to take the project forward”, said Professor Philip Diamond, Director General of the SKA Organisation.

“The SKA will fundamentally change our understanding of the Universe. We are talking about a facility that will be many times better than anything else out there.”

Presently in its design phase, the international project, currently consisting of 11 nations, has been engaged over the last 20 months in a rigorous and extremely challenging science-driven, engineering process with teams from around the world working to refine the design of SKA1.

The SKA instruments will be located in two countries – South Africa and Australia.

In the first phase of the project, South Africa will host about 200 parabolic antennas or dishes -similar to, but much larger than a standard domestic satellite dish-, and Australia more than 100 000 ‘dipole’ antennas, which resemble domestic TV aerials.

“The next step is to work with the SKA partner countries to develop an international Organisation before the start of the construction in 2018”, said Professor John Womersley, Chair of the SKA Board of Directors.

“This incredible telescope has a design, it is within budget, construction is around the corner, it will drive technology development in the era of Big Data, and it is going to deliver Nobel prize-winning science. In short, it will have an invaluable impact on society like very few enterprises before it.”