UK Minister visit to Australia's Square Kilometre Array site
03/03/2014 Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
UK Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts and Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has visited Australia's site for the planned Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope.The SKA is a global science project aimed at building the world's largest radio telescope. Comprising hundreds of thousands of radio antennas in Australia and Africa, the SKA will enable astronomers to monitor the sky in unprecedented detail, thousands of times faster than any system currently in existence.
The UK is a leading consortium member and plays host to the SKA headquarters in Manchester.
"Australia and the UK have a rich history of collaboration on major science projects and we value the relationship between our countries on this important project," Mr Willetts said.
"This is a very exciting time for the Square Kilometre Array telescope and it is obvious when you visit the site that Australia shares my strong sense of anticipation and expectation for the project. Things are really starting to happen here.
"Having recently opened the SKA headquarters in Manchester and visited the South African SKA site, I now have a real sense of a truly international project coming together with the aim of furthering human knowledge," Mr Willetts said.
With image resolution exceeding that of the Hubble Space Telescope by a factor of 50 times, the SKA is expected to solve some fundamental questions about the universe, such as how it began.
"The Square Kilometre Array is a world-class science infrastructure project which will make giant leaps forward in both technology development and in astronomy," Ms Bishop said.
"Australia and the United Kingdom, together with the other SKA partner countries, are working very hard to design and develop the telescope and the two SKA precursor telescopes already in place in Western Australia are already leading the way."
While at the site, the Ministers toured the two Australian SKA precursor telescopes, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) which began operating last year and the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP), commissioned by the Howard Government, which is due to begin official operations as part of the SKA this year.
STFC is providing funding for the UK's involvement in the project's detailed design phase, enabling UK institutes, laboratories and industry to participate in the international work collaborations needed to progress SKA to construction readiness. STFC also provides funding to support operation of the SKA Project Headquarters. Support for UK activities is also being provided by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which identified SKA computing as a key theme in the Autumn Statement 2012 in the field of Big Data.
For more information, please contact:
Corinne Mosese
STFC
Tel: +44 1793 442870
Email: Corinne.Mosese@stfc.ac.uk
Web: www.stfc.ac.uk
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