In Nature:
More hereAgeing satellite dishes, once the backbone of Africa’s telecommunications system, are being given a new lease of life as radio telescopes.
Image courtesy of Michael Gaylard
The thrifty project aims to boost the skills of the continent’s scientists as Africa prepares to host the US$2.1 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA), set to be the world’s most powerful radio telescope when it is completed in the mid-2020s...The SKA will detect radiation from the early Universe, giving clues to how the first stars and galaxies formed.
South Africa has a nucleus of radio-astronomy expertise, but the rest of the continent has few researchers with the skills to work on the SKA. The African SKA partners hope to train a new generation of radio astronomers using the converted satellite dishes, which have been superseded by the high-speed fibre-optic cables skirting Africa’s coast. “We want to make very sure that Africa delivers the best possible instrument, and that African engineers and scientists can maintain and support it,” says Anita Loots, associate director of SKA South Africa.
