Pretoria - Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom will on Thursday launch the first MeerKAT antenna, at the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) core site in Carnarvon in the Northern Cape.
The minister will be joined by host ministers from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) African partner countries from Ghana, Madagascar, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, Mauritius and Kenya. The ministers will meet the day before the launch to discuss strategic SKA-related matters relevant to the partner countries.
MeerKAT is the South African precursor to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, to be built in Africa and in Australia.
MeerKAT is predominantly a locally designed and built instrument, which demonstrates that South Africa can compete with the best when it comes to research, engineering, science and technology. It will constitute 25% of the SKA Phase 1.
When completed in 2016, MeerKAT will consist of 64 antennae and will be the most sensitive radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.
Local and international radio astronomy communities have recognised the MeerKAT as an excellent instrument, and already more than 500 radio astronomers, 58 from Africa, have been allocated time on MeerKAT, according to the Department of Science and Technology.
“So far, they have been allocated a total of five years to conduct surveys of the universe using the telescope.”
The MeerKAT Karoo Array Processor Building data centre has been constructed 5 m underground, in a bunker, to protect MeerKAT from radio frequency interference generated by the equipment located in the data centre.
The data centre is the on-site facility that houses the centralised telescope equipment for the MeerKAT radio telescope.
According to the department, the scientific data from MeerKAT will be sent from the data centre to the science and engineering office in Cape Town, using a long-haul fibre-optic link, which is already in place.
The data centre, as well as the other on-site infrastructure, was constructed by South African companies, and managed by the SKA SA infrastructure team based in Johannesburg.
There are more than 100 young scientists and engineers working on the MeerKAT project.
The South African team, in collaboration with industry, global institutions and universities, has developed technologies and systems for the MeerKAT telescope, including composite telescope dishes and cutting-edge signal-processing hardware and algorithms. – SAnews.gov.za
